The jug had not been stationary, and as Pete thrust his aggressive face forward the vivid, quivering line of light from the furnace showed that it was flushed with liquor, and that his eyes were bloodshot. His gaunt head, with long, colourless hair, protruding teeth, and homely, prominent features, as it hung there in the isolating effect of that sharp and slender gleam—the rest of his body cancelled by the darkness—had a singularly unnatural and sinister aspect. The light glanced back with a steely glimmer. The drunken man had a knife in his hand.
'Storp it, now!' his younger brother drawlingly admonished him. 'Who be ye a-goin' ter cut?'
'Call m-m-me a Philistine! I'll bust his brains out!' asseverated Pete.
'Ye're drunk, Pete,' said old Groundhog Cayce, in an explanatory manner.
There was no move to defend the threatened guest. Perhaps Amos James was supposed to be able to take care of himself.
'Call me a Ph-Philistine—a Philistine!' exclaimed Pete, steadying himself on the keg on which he sat, and peering with wide, light eyes into the darkness, as if to mark the whereabouts of the enemy before dealing the blow. 'Jes' got insurance—c-c-c-call me a Philistine!'
'Shet up, Pete. I'll take it back,' said Amos gravely. 'I'm the Philistine myself; fur pa'son read ez Samson killed a passel o' Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, an' ez long ez ye be talkin' I feel in an' about dead.'
Amos James had bent close attention to the sermon, and had brought as much accurate information from meeting as was consistent with hearing so sensational a story as Samson's for the first time. In the mountains men do not regard church privileges as the opportunity of a quiet hour to meditate on secular affairs, while a gentle voice drones on antiquated themes. To Amos, Samson was the latest thing out.
Pete did not quite catch the full meaning of this sarcasm. He was content that Amos should seem to recant. He replaced his knife, but sat surly and muttering, and now and then glancing toward the guest.
Meantime that vivid white gleam quivered across the dusky shadows; now and then the horse pawed, raising martial echoes, as of squadrons of cavalry, among the multitudinous reverberations of the place, while his stall-companion, that the light could conjure up, was always noiseless; the continuous fresh sound of water gurgling over the rocks mingled with the monotonous drip from the worm; occasionally a gopher would skud among the heavily booted feet, and the jug's activity was marked by the shifting for an interval of the red sparks which indicated the glowing pipes of the burly shadows around the still.