“Bill of sale, by all means.  ‘Right, title, and interest in and to’ . . . ‘forever warrant and—­’ No, Garvey, we’ll have to leave out that ‘defend,’” said Goree with a loud laugh.  “You’ll have to defend this title yourself.”

The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him, folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket.

Goree was standing near the window.  “Step here,” he said, raising his finger, “and I’ll show you your recently purchased enemy.  There he goes, down the other side of the street.”

The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in the direction indicated by the other.  Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect, portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long, double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk.  As Garvey looked, Goree glanced at his face.  If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here was its counterpart.  Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs.

“Is that him?  Why, that’s the man who sent me to the pen’tentiary once!”

“He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly.  “And, by the way, he’s a first-class shot.”

“I kin hit a squirrel’s eye at a hundred yard,” said Garvey.  “So that thar’s Coltrane!  I made a better trade than I was thinkin’.  I’ll take keer ov this feud, Mr. Goree, better’n you ever did!”

He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight perplexity.

“Anything else to-day?” inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm.  “Any family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet?  Prices as low as the lowest.”

“Thar was another thing,” replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, “that Missis Garvey was thinkin’ of.  ’Tain’t so much in my line as t’other, but she wanted partic’lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin’, ‘pay fur it,’ she says, ‘fa’r and squar’.’  Thar’s a buryin’ groun’, as you know, Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo’ old place, under the cedars.  Them that lies thar is yo’ folks what was killed by the Coltranes.  The monyments has the names on ’em.  Missis Garvey says a fam’ly buryin’ groun’ is a sho’ sign of quality.  She says ef we git the feud, thar’s somethin’ else ought to go with it.  The names on them monyments is ‘Goree,’ but they can be changed to ourn by—­”

“Go!  Go!” screamed Goree, his face turning purple.  He stretched out both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking.  “Go, you ghoul!  Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his ancestors—­go!”

The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall.  While he was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor.  As the vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the court-house.