“It warn’t Birt’s doin’, at all?” he said interrogatively, and with a pondering aspect.

Jubal Perkins broke into a derisive guffaw.  “What ails ye, Andy?” he cried.  “Though ye never seen no harnt, ye ’pear ter be fairly witched by that thar tricked-out blackberry bush.”

Rufe shrugged up his shoulders, and began to shiver in imaginary terror over a fancied fire.

“Old—­Mis’—­Price’s—­harnt!” he wheezed.

The point of view makes an essential difference.  Jube Perkins thought Rufe’s comicality most praiseworthy—­his pipe went out while he laughed.  Byers flushed indignantly.

“Ye aggervatin’ leetle varmint!” he cried suddenly, his patience giving way.

He seized the crouching mimic by the collar, and although he did not literally knock him off the wood-pile, as Rufe afterward declared, he assisted the small boy through the air with a celerity that caused Rufe to wink very fast and catch his breath, when he was deposited, with a shake, on the soft pile of ground bark some yards away.

Rufe was altogether unhurt, but a trifle subdued by this sudden aerial excursion.  The fun was over for the present.  He gathered himself together, and went demurely and sat down on the lowest log of the wood-pile.  After a little he produced a papaw from his pocket, and by the manner in which they went to work upon it, his jagged squirrel teeth showed that they were better than they looked.

Towse had followed his master to the tanyard, and was lying asleep beside the woodpile, with his muzzle on his forepaws.

He roused himself suddenly at the sound of munching, and came and sat upright, facing Rufe, and eyeing the papaw gloatingly.  He wagged his tail in a beguiling fashion, and now and then turned his head blandishingly askew.

Of course he would not have relished the papaw, and only begged as a matter of habit or perhaps on principle; but he was given no opportunity to sample it, for Rufe hardly noticed him, being absorbed in dubiously watching Andy Byers, who was once more at work, scraping the hide with the two-handled knife.

Jubal Perkins had gone into the house for a coal to re-kindle his pipe, for there is always a smouldering fire in the “smoke-room” for the purpose of drying the hides suspended from the rafters.  He came out with it freshly glowing, and sat down on the broad, high pile of wood.

As the first whiff of smoke wreathed over his head, he said, “What air the differ ter ye, Andy, whether ’t war bub, hyar, or Birt, ez dressed up the blackberry bush? ye ’pear ter make a differ a-twixt ’em.”

Still Byers was evasive.  “Whar’s Birt, ennyhow?” he demanded irrelevantly.

“Waal,” drawled the tanner, with a certain constraint, “I hed been promisin’ Birt a day off fur a right smart while, an’ I tole him ez he mought ez well hev the rest o’ ter-day.  He ’lowed ez he warn’t partic’lar ’bout a day off, now.  But I tole him ennyhow ter go along.  I seen him a while ago passin’ through the woods, with his rifle on his shoulder—­gone huntin’, I reckon.”