The tanner commented upon this inactivity, one day.  “Hev ye tuk root thar, Andy?” he asked.

Byers roused himself with a start.  “Naw,” he replied reflectively, “but I hev been troubled in my mind some, lately, an’ I gits ter studyin’ powerful wunst in a while.”

As he bent to his work, scraping the two-handled knife up and down the hide stretched over the wooden horse, he added, “I hev got so ez I can’t relish my vittles sca’cely, bein’ so tormented in my mind, an’ my sleep air plumb broke up; ’pears like ter me ez I hev got a reg’lar gift fur the nightmare.”

“Been skeered by old Mis’ Price’s harnt lately?” Rufe asked suddenly from his perch upon the wood-pile.

Byers whirled round abruptly, fixing an astonished gaze upon Rufe, unmindful that the knife slipped from his grasp, and fell clanking upon the ground.

CHAPTER IX.

This grave, eager gaze Rufe returned with the gayest audacity.

“Been skeered by old Mis’ Price’s harnt lately?” he once more chirped out gleefully.

He was comical enough, as he sat on the top of the wood-pile, hugging his knees with both arms, his old, bent, wool hat perched on the back of his tow head, and all his jagged squirrel teeth showing themselves, unabashed, in a wide grin.

Jubal Perkins laughed lazily, as he looked at him.

Then, with that indulgence which Rufe always met at the tanyard, and which served to make him so pert and forward, the tanner said, humoring the privileged character, “What be you-uns a-talkin’ ’bout, boy?  Mrs. Price ain’t dead.”

“He hev viewed old Mis’ Price’s harnt,” cried Rufe, pointing at Andy Byers, with a jocosely crooked finger.  “He air so peart an’ forehanded a-viewin’ harnts, he don’t hev to wait till folkses be dead.  He hev seen Mis’ Price’s harnt—­an’ it plumb skeered the wits out’n him.”

Perkins did not understand this.  His interest was suddenly alert.  He took his pipe from his mouth, and glanced over his shoulder at Byers.  “What air Rufe aimin’ at, Andy?” he asked, surprised.

Byers did not reply.  He still gazed steadfastly at Rufe; the knife lay unheeded on the ground at his feet, and the hide was slipping from the wooden horse.

At last he said slowly, “Birt tole ye ’bout’n it, eh?”

“Naw, sir!  Naw!” Rufe rocked himself fantastically to and fro in imminent peril of toppling off the wood-pile. “’Twar Tom Byers ez tole me.”

“Tom!” exclaimed Byers, with a galvanic start.

For Tom was his son, and he had not suspected filial treachery in the matter of the spectral blackberry bush.

Rufe stared in his turn, not comprehending Byers’s surprise.

“Tom,” he reiterated presently, with mocking explicitness.  “Tom Byers—­I reckon ye knows him.  That thar freckled-faced, snaggled-toothed, red-headed Tom Byers, ez lives at yer house.  I reckon ye mus’ know him.”