The old basket-maker was the most unpopular man in Flat Creek district.  He had two great vices.  He would go to Clifty and have a “spree” once in three months.  And he would tell the truth in a most unscrupulous manner.  A man given to plain speaking was quite as objectionable in Flat Creek as he would have been in France under the Empire, the Commune, or the Republic, and almost as objectionable as he would be in any refined community in America.  People who live in glass houses have a horror of people who throw stones.  And the old basket-maker, having no friends, was a good scape-goat.  In driving him off, Pete Jones would get rid of a dangerous neighbor and divert attention from himself.  The immediate crime of the basket-maker was that he had happened to see too much.

“Mr. Hartsook,” said Bud, when they got out into the road, “you’d better go straight home to the Squire’s.  Bekase ef this lightnin’ strikes a second time it’ll strike awful closte to you.  You hadn’t better be seen with us.  Which way did you come, Shocky?”

“Why, I tried to come down the holler, but I met Jones right by the big road, and he sweared at me and said he’d kill me ef I didn’t go back and stay.  And so I went back to the house and then slipped out through the graveyard.  You see I was bound to come ef I got skinned.  For Mrs Pearson’s, stuck to me and I mean to stick to him, you see.”

Bud led Shocky through the graveyard.  But when they reached the forest path from the graveyard he thought that perhaps it was not best to “show his hand,” as he expressed it, too soon.

“Now, Shocky,” he said, “do you run ahead and tell the ole man that I want to see him right off down by the Spring-in-rock.  I’ll keep closte behind you, and ef anybody offers to trouble you, do you let off a yell and I’ll be thar in no time.”

When Ralph left the school-house he felt mean.  There were Bud and Shocky gone on an errand of mercy, and he, the truant member of the Church of the Best Licks, was not with them.  The more he thought of it the more he seemed to be a coward, and the more he despised himself; so, yielding as usual to the first brave impulse, he leaped nimbly over the fence and started briskly through the forest in a direction intersecting the path on which were Bud and Shocky.  He came in sight just in time to see the first conflict of the Church in the Wilderness with her foes.

For Shocky’s little feet went more swiftly on their eager errand than Bud had anticipated.  He got farther out of Bud’s reach than the latter intended he should, and he did not discover Pete Jones until Pete, with his hog-drover’s whip, was right upon him.

Shocky tried to halloo for Bud, but he was like one in a nightmare.  The yell died into a whisper which could not have been heard ten feet.

I shall not repeat Mr. Jones’s words.  They were frightfully profane.  But he did not stop at words.  He swept his whip round and gave little Shocky one terrible cut.  Then the voice was released, and the piercing cry of pain brought Bud down the path flying.