‘You go on back, Bob,’ he said.  ‘This’ll give me some more lookin’ up to do.  Tell my wife I’ll just spend the night with Judge Fowler, an’ git back in time for court in Belcher’s sto’ in the mornin’.  An’, Bob, you just stop by Mrs. Allen’s—­she’s guardian of the boy—­an’ tell her I say to bring him to Belcher’s sto’ to-morrow mornin’ at nine.  You be there, too, Mr. Thornycroft—­an,’ by the way, bring that block of wood you been talkin’ about.”

That was all the squire had said, declared the rural policeman.  No, he hadn’t sent any other message—­just said he would read up on the case.  The rural policeman went out and closed the door behind him.  It had been informal, hap-hazard, like the life of the community in which they lived.  But, for all that, the law had knocked at the door of the Widow Allen, and left a white-faced mother and a bewildered boy behind.

They tried to resume their usual employments.  Mrs. Allen sat down beside the table, picked up her sewing and put her glasses on, but her hands trembled when she tried to thread the needle.  Davy sat on a split-bottom chair in the corner, his feet up on the rungs, and tried to be still; but his heart was pounding fast and there was a lump in his throat.  Presently he got up and went out of doors, to get in some kindling on the back porch before it snowed, he told his mother.  But he went because he couldn’t sit there any longer, because he was about to explode with rage and grief and fear and bitterness.

He did not go toward the woodpile—­what difference did dry kindling make now?  At the side of the house he stooped down and softly called Buck.  The hound came to him, wriggling along under the beams, and he leaned against the house and lovingly pulled the briar-torn ears.  A long time he stayed there, feeling on his face already the fine mist of snow.  To-morrow the ground would be white; it didn’t snow often in that country; day after to-morrow everybody would hunt rabbits—­everybody but him and Buck.

It was snowing hard when at last he went back into the warm room, so warm that he pulled off his coat.  Once more he tried to sit still in the split-bottom chair.  But there is no rage that consumes like the rage of a boy.  In its presence he is so helpless!  If he were a man, thought Davy, he would go to Old Man Thornycroft’s house that night, call him out, and thrash him in the road.  If he were a man, he would curse, he would do something.  He looked wildly about the room, the hopelessness of it all coming over him in a wave.  Then suddenly, because he wasn’t a man, because he couldn’t do what he wanted to do, he began to cry, not as a boy cries, but more as a man cries, in shame and bitterness, his shoulders shaken by great convulsive sobs, his head buried in his hands, his fingers running through his tangled mop of hair.

“Davy, Davy!” The sewing and the scissors slipped to the floor.  His mother was down on her knees beside him, one arm about his shoulders, trying to pry his face from his hands, trying to look into his eyes.  “You’re my man, Davy!  You’re the only man, the only help I’ve got.  You’re my life, Davy.  Poor boy!  Poor child!”