“Um!...” said Scattergood.

“Mary’s about the pertiest girl in Coldriver,” said Pliny.  “Dunno but what she could handle Abner all right, too.  Call to mind the firemen’s picnic last year when she went with Abner, and he busted loose on that feller with the three shells and the leetle ball?”

“When the feller had robbed Half-wit Stenens of nigh on to twenty dollars?  I call to mind.”

“Abner was jest on the p’int of separatin’ that feller into chunks and dispersin’ the chunks over the county when Mary she steps up and puts her hand en his arm, and says, ‘Abner!’ ...  Jest like that she said it, quiet and gentle, but firm.  Abner he let loose of the feller and turned to look at her, and in a minute all the fight went out of his face and his eyes like somebody had drained it off.  He kind of blushed and hung his head, and walked away with her....  She didn’t tongue-lash him, neither, jest kept a-touchin’ his arm so’s he wouldn’t forgit she was there.”

“Um!...” said Scattergood.  “Here comes Asa.”  He lifted himself from his creaking chair and started across the bridge.  “If it’s a-comin’ off,” he said to Pliny, “I want to git where I kin git a good view.”

In the post office the twin brothers came face to face.  Scattergood saw Abner’s thin lips twist in a provocative sneer.  Abner halted suddenly, at arm’s length from his brother, and eyed him from head to foot, and Asa returned an insolent stare.

“You sneakin’ hound,” said Abner, without heat, as was his way in the beginning, always.  “You’re lower’n I thought, and I thought you was low.”  Scattergood took in these words and pondered them.  Did they mean some new cause for enmity between the brothers?  Suddenly Abner’s eyes began to kindle and to blaze.  Asa crouched and his teeth showed in a saturnine, crooked smile.  No man could look upon him and accuse him of being afraid of Abner or of avoiding the issue.

“I know what you’ve been up to, you slinkin’ varmint ...  I know where you was Tuesday.”  Scattergood took possession of this sentence and placed it in the safety-deposit box of his memory.  Where had Asa been Tuesday, he wondered, and what had Asa been doing there?

“I’ve put up with a heap from you, for you’re my own flesh and blood.  I hain’t never laid a hand on you, though I’ve threatened it often.  But now! by Gawd, I’m goin’ to take you apart so’s nobody kin put you together ag’in ... you mis’able, cheatin’, low-down, crawlin’ snake.”  With that he stepped back a pace and with his open palm struck Asa across the mouth.

Asa licked his lips and continued to smile his crooked, saturnine smile.

“Hain’t scarcely room in here,” he said, softly.

“Git outside and take off your coat,” said Abner, “for I’m goin’ to fix you so’s nobody kin ever accuse flesh and blood of mine of doin’ agin what I’ve ketched you doin’.”

“What’s gnawin’ you,” said Asa, softly, “is that I got the best farm and that I’m a-goin’ to git your girl.”