“The mark....  Sometimes it showed plain.  It was a mark put on Asa Levens’s face as a warning to folks that God mistrusted him.”

“When he was dead it was different,” said Scattergood, with solemnity.  “It said he had r’iled God past endurance.”

Mary nodded.  She comprehended.  “The truth will do,” she said, confidently.

“Did Abner mention last Tuesday to you?” Scattergood asked.

“No.”

“Where was Asa Levens last Tuesday?  Do you know, Mary?”

“No.”

“Why did Abner say to Asa yesterday, ’It’s not on account of her, it’s on account of her’?”

“I don’t know.”

“G’-by, Mary.  G’-by.”  It was so Scattergood always ended a conversation, abruptly, but as one became accustomed to it it was neither abrupt nor discourteous.

“Thank you,” said Mary, and she went away obediently.

As the afternoon was stretching toward evening, Scattergood sauntered into Sheriff Ulysses Watts’s barn.

“Who’s feedin’ and waterin’ Asa Levens’s stock?” he asked.

“Dummed if I didn’t clean forgit ’em,” confessed the sheriff.

“Any objection if I look after ’em, Sheriff?  Any logical objection?  Hoss might need exercisin’.  Can’t never tell.  Want I should drive up and do what’s needed to be done?”

“Be much ’bleeged,” said Sheriff Watts.

Scattergood drove briskly to Asa Levens’s farm, watered and fed the stock, and then led out of its stall Asa Levens’s favorite driving mare.  He hitched it to Asa Levens’s buggy and mounted to the seat.  “Giddap,” he said to the mare, and dropped the reins on her back.  She started out of the gate and turned toward town.  Scattergood let the reins lie, attempting no guidance.  At the next four corners the mare hesitated, slowed, and, feeling no direction from her driver, turned to the left.  Scattergood nodded his head.

The mare trotted on, following the slowly lifting mountain road for a matter of two miles, and then turned again down a highway that was little more than a tote road.  Half a mile later she stopped with her nose against the fence of a shabby farmhouse, and sagged down, as is the custom of horses when they realize they are at their destination and have a rest of duration before them.  Scattergood alighted and fastened her to the fence.

As he swung open the gate a middle-aged man appeared in the door of the house, and over his shoulder Scattergood could see the white face of a woman—­staring.

“Evening Jed,” said Scattergood.  “Evening Mis’ Briggs.”

“Howdy, Mr. Baines?  Wa’n’t expectin’ to see you.  What fetches you this fur off’n the road?”

“Sort of got here by accident, you might say.  Didn’t come of my own free will, seems as though.  Kind of tired, Jed.  Mind if I set a spell?...  How’s the cannin’, Mis’ Briggs?”

“Done up thutty quarts to-day, Mr. Baines,” said the young woman, who was Jed Briggs’s wife, a woman fifteen years his junior, comely, desirable, vivid.