Well, we’d come over to Ezry’s far some grindin’ that day; and Steve wanted to price some lumber far a house, intendin’ to marry that Fall—­and would a-married, I reckon, ef the girl hadn’t a-died jist as she’d got her weddin’ clothes done, and that set hard on Steve far awhile.  Yit he rallied, you know, as a youngster will; but he never married, someway—­never married.  Reckon he never found no other woman he could love well enough, ’less it was—­well, no odds.—­The Good Bein’s jedge o’ what’s best far each and all.

We lived then about eight mild from Ezry’s, and it tuck about a day to make the trip; so you kin kind o’ git an idee o’ how the roads was in them days.

Well, on the way over I noticed Steve was mighty quiet-like, but I didn’t think nothin’ of it, tel at last he says, says he, “Tom, I want you to kind o’ keep an eye out far Ezry’s new hand,” meanin Bills.  And then I kind o’ suspicioned somepin’ o’ nother was up betwixt ’em; and shore enough ther was, as I found out afore the day was over.

I knowed ’at Bills was a mean sort of a man, from what I’d heerd.  His name was all over the neighborhood afore he’d be’n here two weeks.

In the first place, he come in a suspicious sort o’ way.  Him and his wife, and a little baby only a few months old, come through in a kivvered wagon with a fambly a-goin’ som’ers in The Illinoy; and they stopped at the mill, far some meal er somepin’, and Bills got to talkin’ with Ezry ‘bout millin’, and one thing o’ nother, and said he was expeerenced some ’bout a mill hisse’f, and told Ezry ef he’d give him work he’d stop; said his wife and baby wasn’t strong enough to stand trav’lin’, and ef Ezry’d give him work he was ready to lick into it then and there; said his woman could pay her board by sewin’ and the like, tel they got ahead a little; and then, ef he liked the neighberhood, he said he’d as leave settle there as anywheres; he was huntin’ a home, he said, and the outlook kind o’ struck him, and his woman railly needed rest, and wasn’t strong enough to go much furder.  And old Ezry kind o’ tuck pity on the feller; and havin’ houseroom to spare, and railly in need of a good hand at the mill, he said all right; and so the feller stopped and the wagon druv ahead and left ’em; and they didn’t have no things ner nothin’—­not even a cyarpet-satchel, ner a stitch o’ clothes, on’y what they had on their backs.  And I think it was the third er fourth day after Bills stopped ‘at he whirped Tomps Burk, the bully o’ here them days, tel you would n’t a-knowed him!

Well, I’d heerd o’ this, and the fact is I’d made up my mind ’at Bills was a bad stick, and the place was n’t none the better far his bein’ here.  But, as I was a-goin’ on to say,—­as Steve and me driv up to the mill, I ketched sight o’ Bills the first thing, a-lookin’ out o’ where some boards was knocked off, jist over the worter-wheel; and he knowed Steve—­I could see that by his face; and