The old woman stood as straight as she could and looked at the grim miller with shining eyes.  Ruth thought her face really beautiful as she smiled and said, wagging her head at the gray-faced man: 

“Oh, Jabez Potter!  Jabez Potter!  Nobody’ll know till you’re in your coffin jest how much good you’ve done in this world’—­on the sly!  An’ you’ll let this pore boy rest an’ git well here before he has to go out an’ hunt a job for hisself.  For my pretty, here, tells me he ain’t got no home nor no friends.”

“Uh-huh!” grunted Uncle Jabez, and stumped away to the mill, fairly beaten for the time.

“He grumbles and grunts,” observed Aunt Alvirah, shaking her head as she turned to her work again.  “But out o’ sight he’s re’lly gettin’ tender-hearted, Ruthie.  An’ I b’lieve you showed him how a lot.  Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!”

Before supper time a man on horseback came to the mill and cried a warning to the miller and his family:  “Look out for your stables and pigpens.  There’s three beasts loose from those wrecked menagerie cars at the crossing, Jabez.”

“Mercy on us!  They ain’t bound this way, are they?” demanded Uncle Jabez, with more anxiety than he usually showed.

“Nobody knows.  You know, the piece of woods yonder is thick.  The menagerie men lost them an hour ago.  A big black panther—­an ugly brute—­and a lion and lioness.  Them last two they say is as tame as kittens.  But excuse me!  I’d ruther trust the kittens,” said the neighbor.  Then he dug his heels in the sides of his horse and started off to bear the news to other residents along the road that followed this bank of the Lumano River.

Jabez shouted for Ben to hurry through his supper, and they closed the mill tight while the womenfolk tried to close all the shutters on the first floor of the cottage.  But the “blinds” had not been closed on the east side of the house since they were painted the previous spring.  Aunt Alviry was the kind of housekeeper who favored the morning sun and it always streamed into the windows of the guest room.

When they tried to close the outside shutters of those windows, one had a broken hinge that the painters had said nothing about.  The heavy blind fell to the ground.

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Ruth, running back into the house.  “That old panther could jump right into that room where Jerry is.  But if we keep a bright light in there all night, I guess he won’t—­if he comes this way at all.”

It was foolish, of course, to fear the coming of the marauding animal from the shattered circus car.  Probably, Ruth told herself before the evening was half over, “Rival’s Circus and Menagerie” had moved on with all its beasts.

Uncle Jabez, however, got down the double-barreled shotgun, cleaned and oiled it, and slipped in two cartridges loaded with big shot.

“I ain’t aimin’ to lose my pigs if I can help it,” he said.