Richard did not mean to say that last.  It dropped from him mechanically, and in an instant his mother seized upon it, demanding what he meant, and who was the villain referred to.  Richard tried to put her off, but she would know what he meant, and so to her and his three brothers he told as little as he could and make any kind of a story, and as he talked his heart hardened toward Ethie, who had done him this wrong.  It seemed a great deal worse when put into words, and the whole expression of Richard’s face was changed when he had finished speaking, while he was conscious of feeling much as he did that night when he denounced Ethie so terribly to her face.  “Had it been a man, or half a man, or anybody besides that contemptible puppy, it would not seem so bad; but to forsake me for him!” Richard said, while the great ridges deepened in his forehead, and a hard, black look crept into his eyes, and about the corners of his mouth.  He was terrible in his anger, which grew upon him until even his mother stood appalled at the fearful expression of his face.

“He would do nothing to call her back,” he said, when James suggested the propriety of trying in a quiet way to ascertain where she had gone.  “She had chosen her own path to ruin, and she might tread it for all of him.  He would not put forth a hand to save her and if she came back, he never could forgive her.”

Richard was walking up and down the room, white with rage, as he said this, and Andy, cowering in a corner, was looking on and listening.  He did not speak until Richard declared his incapacity for forgiving Ethie, when he started up, and confronting the angry man, said to him rebukingly: 

“Hold there, old Dick!  You have gone a leetle too far.  If God can forgive you and me all them things we’ve done, which he knows about, and other folks don’t, you can, or or’to forgive sister Ethie, let her sin be what it may.  Ethie was young, Dick, and childlike, and so pretty, too, and I ’most know you aggravated her some, if you talked to her as you feel now; and then, too, Dick, and mother, and all of you, I don’t care who says it, or thinks it, it’s a big lie!  Ethie never went off with a man—­never!  I know she didn’t.  She wasn’t that kind.  I’ll swear to it in the court.  I won’t hear anybody say that about her.  I’ll fight ’em, first, even if ’twas my own kin who did it!” And in his excitement, Andy began to shove back his wrist-bands from his strong wrists, as if challenging someone to the fight he had threatened.

Andy was splendid in his defense of Ethie, and both James and John stepped up beside him, showing their adhesion to the cause he pleaded so well.  Ethie might have ran away, but she had surely gone alone, they said, and their advice was that Richard should follow her as soon as possible.  But Richard would not listen to such a proposition now, and quietly aided and abetted by his mother, he declared his intention of “letting her alone.”  She had chosen her course, he said, and she must abide by it.  “If she has gone with that villain”—­and Richard ground his teeth together—­“she can never again come back to me.  If she has not gone with him, and chooses to return, I do not say the door is shut against her.”