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against the walls. From far off in the direction of the Coltrane place he heard the howl of a dog mourning the evil of night.

The howl made Abner think hazily of ghosts, of hobgoblins, of the eerie things that endanger the darkness to men. A shiver went through his chill frame. He bestirred himself and kicked the pine fagots so that they burst into flame and guttered down the wind.

He thought of Nessie and his child again with a queer detachment, little Nessie Teeftallow Belshue; and presently he would be living in the Jones's manor in Lanesburg, married to Adelaide. In what a queer way life worked! There was no justice to that; there was nothing supervising such things as that: it was just luck.

Abner drew out his bottle again with a feeling that here at least was something dependable in an unstable world. He took a draught of the liquid, then breathed through his open mouth while tears started to his eyes from the fiery stuff. He hoped his little girl baby would never marry a drinking man. A song started in Abner's head, and he began crooning aloud the words of a doleful tune.

He did not know how long he had been singing when a sense of movement among the bushes beyond the shanghai stable caught his attention. He had been, one might say, only tentatively tipsy, now this movement near the stable sobered him for the time being.

He arose swiftly from his sitting posture, took two long strides out of the firelight into the darkness, then moved silently down the levee toward the stables with his automatic ready. For some reason he was growing angry. He levelied on the dark bushes and snarled out, "Come out o’ there, you damn snake. I'll blow hell out of ye!"

He was on the verge of shooting when a voice quite to one side of the suspected spot said, "Wait a minute, partner—you ain't shootin' peaceable men, air ye?"

"You're a striker, ain't ye?" snapped Abner, shifting his gun in the new direction.