him right acrost Bills and Steve.  Well, it ain’t fair, and I don’t like to tell it, but I seed it was the last chance and I tuck advantage of it:—­As Wesley and Ben fell it pulled Bills down in a kind o’ twist, don’t you understand, so’s he couldn’t he’p hisse’f, yit still a-clinchin’ Steve by the throat, and him black in the face:  Well, as they fell I grabbed up a little hick’ry limb, not bigger ‘n my two thumbs, and I struck Bills a little tap kind o’ over the back of his head like, and blame me ef he didn’t keel over like a stuck pig—­and not any too soon, nuther, far he had Steve’s chunk as nigh put out as you ever seed a man’s, to come to agin.  But he was up th’reckly and ready to a-went at it ef Bills could a-come to the scratch; but Mister Bills he wasn’t in no fix to try it over!  After a-waitin’ awhile far him to come to, and him not a-comin’ to, we concluded ’at we’d better he’p him, maybe.  And we worked with him, and washed him, and drenched him with whisky, but it ’peared like it wasn’t no use:  He jist laid there with his eyes about half shet, and a-breathin’ like a hoss when he’s bad sceart; and I’ll be dad-limbed ef I don’t believe he’d a-died on our hands ef it hadn’t a-happened old Doc Zions come a-ridin’ past on his way home from the Murdock neighberhood, where they was a-havin’ sich a time with the milk-sick.  And he examined Bills, and had him laid on a plank and carried down to the house—­’bout a mild, I reckon, from the mill.  Looked kind o’ curous to see Steve a-heppin’ pack the feller, after his nearly chokin’ him to death.  Oh, it was a bloody fight, I tell you!  W’y, ther wasn’t a man in the mill ‘at didn’t have a black eye er somepin’; and old Ezry, where Bills hit him, had his nose broke, and was as bloody as a butcher.  And you’d ort a-seed the women-folks when our p’session come a-bringin’ Bills in.  I never seed anybody take on like Bills’s woman.  It was distressin’; it was, indeed.—­Went into hysterics, she did; and we thought far awhile she’d gone plum crazy, far she cried so pitiful over him, and called him “Charley!  Charley!” ’stid of his right name, and went on, clean out of her head, tel she finally jist fainted clean away.

Far three weeks Bills laid betwixt life and death, and that woman set by him night and day, and tended him as patient as a’ angel—­and she was a’ angel, too; and he’d a-never lived to bother nobody agin ef it hadn’t a-be’n far Annie, as he called her.  Zions said ther was a ‘brazure of the—­some kind o’ p’tubernce, and ef he’d a-be’n struck jist a quarter of a’ inch below—­jist a quarter of a’ inch—­he’d a-be’n a dead man.  And I’ve sence wished—­not ’at I want the life of a human bein’ to account far, on’y, well, no odds—­I’ve sence wished ’at I had a-hit him jist a quarter of a’ inch below!