“It’s a nice-looking baby!” admitted Mr. Shrimplin, relenting.

“It’s a boy, see—­he’s got his father’s eyes and nose—­”

“I don’t know about the eyes, but the nose is a durn sight whiter than Joe’s!  Maybe, though, when it’s Joe’s age it will use the same brand of paint.”

“What you got it in for Joe for?  He never done nothing to you!” said Joe’s wife, with palpable offense.

“He ought to be stood up and lammed over the head with a club!” observed Mr. Shrimplin, with considerable acrimony of tone.  “You’d have thought that being a witness would have made a man out of Joe if anything would,—­and how does he act?  Why, he lights out; he gets to be good for something beside soaking up whisky and spoiling his insides, and he skips the town; now if that ain’t a devil of a way for him to act, I’d like to know what you call it!”

“He was a good man—­” declared Mrs. Montgomery with conviction.  “A good man, but unfortunate!”

“Well, if he suits you, Nellie—­”

“He does!”

“I’m glad of it,” retorted Mr. Shrimplin, taking a chew of tobacco.  “For I don’t reckon he’d ever suit any one else!”

“You and none of my family never liked Joe!” said Mrs. Montgomery.

“Well, why should we?” demanded Mr. Shrimplin impatiently.

“Your wife,—­my own sister, too,—­said he should never darken her door, and he was that proud he never did!  You couldn’t have dragged him there!” said Mrs. Montgomery, and the ready tears dimmed her eyes.

“And you couldn’t have dragged him away quick enough if he had a-come!  Now don’t you get tearful over Joe, you can’t call him no prodigal; his veal’s tough old beef by this time!  But I never had nothing in particular against him more than I thought he ought to be kicked clean off the face of the earth!” said Mr. Shrimplin, rolling his drooping flaxen mustache fiercely between his stubby thumb and its neighboring forefinger.

Such personal relations as the little lamplighter had sustained with the handy-man had invariably been of the most friendly and pacific description.  Esteeming Joe a gentleman of uncertain habits, and of criminal instincts that might at any moment be translated into vigorous action, Mr. Shrimplin had always been at much pains to placate him.  In the heat of the moment, however, all this was forgotten, and Mr. Shrimplin’s love of decency and rectitude promptly asserted itself.

“It’s easy enough to pick flaws in a popular good-looking man like Joe!” said Mrs. Montgomery, with whom time and absence had been at work, also, and to such an extent that the first dim glint of a halo was beginning to fix itself about the curly red head of her delinquent spouse.

“And a whole lot of good them good looks of his has done you, Nellie,” rejoined Mr. Shrimplin, with a little cackle of mirth.

“He never even seen his youngest!” said Mrs. Montgomery, giving completely away to tears at this moving thought of the handy-man’s deprivation.