CHAPTER VIII

SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL

At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate, stopped at Bottom’s Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable hearth in the public room.  The genius of personality had enabled Betsey Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating to the chance comer was that he never came.  By combining a store with a public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as the absence of guests.  “Thank the Lord, I’ve never been one to give in to changes!” it was her habit to exclaim.

The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused, in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle’s quavering voice floated to him from a seat in the warmest corner.  The old man was now turning ninety, and he had had, on the whole, a fortunate life, though he would have indignantly repudiated the idea.  He was a fair type of the rustic of the past generation—­slow of movement, keen of wit, racy of speech.

“What’s this here tale about Mr. Jonathan knockin’ Archie down an’ settin’ on him, Abel?” he inquired.  “Ain’t you got yo’ hand in yet, seein’ as you’ve been spilin’ for a fight for the last fortnight?”

“I hadn’t heard of it,” replied Abel, his face flushing.  “What in hell did he knock Archie down for?”

“Jest for shooting’ a few birds that might as well have been flying about on yo’ land as on his, if thar minds had been set over toward you.”

“Do you mean Mr. Jonathan got into a quarrel with him for hunting on his land?  Why, we shot over those fields for a hundred years before the first damned Gay ever came here.”

“So we have—­so we have, but it seems we ain’t a-goin’ to do so any longer if Mr. Jonathan can find a way to prevent it.  Archie was down here jest a minute or two arter you went by this mornin’, an’ he was swearin’ like thunder, with a busted lip an’ a black eye.”

A smarting sensation passed over Abel, as though the change to the warm room after the cold outside were stinging his flesh.

“Well, I wish I had been there,” he retorted, “somebody else would have been knocked down and sat on if that had happened.”

“Ah, so I said—­so I said,” chuckled old Adam.  “Thar ain’t many men with sech a hearty stomach for trouble, I was jest sayin’ to Solomon.”

Bending over the fire, he lifted a live ember between two small sticks, and placing it in the callous palm of his hand, blew softly on it an instant before he lighted his pipe.

“What goes against my way of thinkin’,” remarked Betsey Bottom, wiping a glass of cider on her checked apron before she handed it to Abel, “is that so peaceable lookin’ a gentleman as Mr. Jonathan should begin to start a fuss jest as soon as he lands in the midst of us.  Them plump, soft-eyed males is generally inclined to mildness whether they be men or cattle.”