Billy stared at her. “I don’t know what he said!  I wouldn’t think you’d need to ask.  When I came in the cabin—­I lied about getting lost from the trail—­I turned around and came back, because I was afraid he might come before I could get back, and—­when I came in, there was something.  I could tell, all right.  Yuh sat there behind the table looking like yuh was—­well, kinda cornered.  And he was—­Flora, he did say something, or do something!  He didn’t act right to yuh.  I could tell. Didn’t he?  Yuh needn’t be afraid to tell me, Girlie.  I give him a thrashing for it.  What was it?  I want to know.”  He did not realize how pugnacious was his pose, but he was leaning toward her with his face quite close, and his eyes were blue points of intensity.  His hands, doubled and pressing hard on the table, showed white at the knuckles.

Flora rattled the dishes in the pan and laughed unsteadily.  “Go to work, Billy Boy, and don’t act stagey,” she commanded lightly.  “I’ll tell you the exact truth—­and that isn’t anything to get excited over.  Fred Walland came about three minutes before you did, and of course I didn’t know he belonged there.  I was afraid.  He pushed open the door, and he was swearing a little at the ice there, where we threw out the dish water.  I knew it wasn’t you, and I got back in the corner.  He came in and looked awfully stunned at seeing me and said, ’I beg your pardon, fair one’.”  She blushed and did not look up.  “He said, ’I didn’t know there was a lady present,’ and put down the sack of stuff and looked at me for a minute or two without saying a word.  He was just going to speak, I think, when you burst in.  And that’s all there was to it, Billy Boy.  I was frightened because I didn’t know who he was, and he did stare—­but, so did you, Billy Boy, when I opened the door and walked in.  You stared every bit as hard and long as Fred Walland did.”

“But I’ll bet I didn’t have the same look in my face.  Yuh wasn’t scared of me,” Billy asserted shrewdly.

“I was too!  I was horribly scared—­at first.  So if you fought Fred Walland and killed his dog” (the reproach of her tone, then!) “because you imagined a lot that wasn’t true, you ought to go straight and apologize.”

“I don’t think I will!  Good Lord!  Flora, do yuh think I don’t know the stuff he’s made of?  He’s a low-down, cowardly cur—­the kind uh man that is always bragging about—­” (Billy stuck there.  With her big, innocent eyes looking up at him, he could not say “bragging about the women he’s ruined,” so he changed weakly) “about all he’s done.  He’s a murderer that ought by rights t’ be in the pen right now—­”

“I think that will do, Billy!” she interrupted indignantly.  “You know he couldn’t help killing that man.”