“I’m glad indeed the poor woman is to have someone like you that will take the responsibility off her shoulders, because those boys are now at an age where discipline counts.  Of course she’ll expect you to be gentle with them, even though firm.  Oswald—­he’s eleven now, I believe—­will soon be old enough to send to reform school; but the younger ones, seven and nine—­My! such spirits as they have!  They’ll really need someone with strength.”

Homer was looking as if this bright chatter would add twenty years to his age.  He’d slumped down on the stoop, where he’d been setting, like he’d had a stroke.

“So she’s that kind, is she?” he kind of mutters.  “A good thing I found it out on her!”

“The children live with their grandmother in Red Gap while their mother is away,” says Minna.  “They really need a strong hand.”

“Not mine!” says Homer.  Then he got slowly up and staggered down a few steps toward the gate.  “It’s a good thing I found out this scandal on her in time,” says he.  “Talk about underhandedness!  Talk about a woman hiding her guilty secret!  Talk about infamy!  I’ll expose her, all right.  I’m going straight to her and tell her I know all.  I’ll make her cower in shame!” He’s out on his horse with his reckless threat.

“Now you’ve sunk the ship,” I says to Minna.  “I knew the woman was leading a double life as fur as Homer was concerned, but I wasn’t going to let on to the poor zany.  It’s time he was speared, and this would of been a judgment on him that his best friends would of relished keenly.  Lots of us was looking forward to the tragedy with great pleasure.  You spoiled a lot of fun for the valley.”

“But it would not have been right,” says Minna.  “It would truly have been the blackest of tragedies to a man of Mr. Gale’s sensitive fibres.  You can’t enter into his feelings because you never taught primary.  Also, I think he is very far from being a poor zany, as you have chosen to call him.”  The poor thing was warm and valiant when she finished this, looking like Joan of Arc or someone just before the battle.

And Homer never went back and made the lady cower like he said he meant to.  Mebbe it occurred to him on the way that she was not one of them that cower easy.  Mebbe he felt he was dealing with a desperate adventuress, as cunning as she was false-hearted.  Anyway, he weakened like so many folks that start off brave to tell someone so-and-so right to their faces.  He didn’t go back at all till the middle of the night, when he pussyfooted in and got his things out, and disappeared like he had stumbled down a well.

Uncle Henry had to feed his own stock next morning, while Mrs. Tolliver took on in great alarm and wanted a posse formed to rescue Homer from wherever he was.  Her first idea was that he had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom; but someway she couldn’t get any one else very hearty about this notion.  So then she said he had been murdered, or was lying off in the brush somewhere with a broken leg.