Them cussed lawyers have a sassy way of--" Buck got up, kicked his chair off onto the ground, and in choler uncontrollable, clacked his fists under Avery's nose and barked: "Twit me another word-just one other word-and I'll drive that old nose of yourn clear up into the roof of your head!" Then he locked his store door and stumped away across the field to the big barn, where the remains of Buck's Leviathan Circus reposed in isolated state. No one knows by just what course of agonized reasoning he arrived at his final decision, but at dusk he came back to the store. With the dumb placidity of some ruminant, Avery was sitting in his same place on the platform of the emporium.

"Brick," said Ivory, humbly, "I've been thinking back and remembering what I wrote to her-and it's all of it pretty clear in my mind, 'cause I never wrote love letters to anyone else. And I can't face it. I couldn't sit in court and hear it.