"Where is your father?"

"Him dey 'een de sheriff buggy gwine to de chain gang."

"How is that possible?"

"Dem had um to Mr. Haman to de co't dis mawnin'."

"Who had him there?"

"Dorcas en him ma, en pa dun condem'."

I waited for no more, entirely forgetting that I had not eaten my dinner of delicious shad. I put on my hat and flew out to the front gate. One feels very tenderly for those one has helped and poor Elihu has been a care and anxiety to me for years.

His family relations have always been difficult and complicated. His second wife and nearly all his children having died of a galloping consumption, he has now taken a third wife who has eight children of her own and is a termagant, so that though he works hard, and is honest and law abiding after a fashion, and very civil, even courteous, in manner, he is always in some trouble, generally debt. On my way to the gate I met Lizette, his daughter, crying as she ran on her way to call me. I asked what it meant, as I had been unable to get anything out of Goliah, and she explained to me that Elihu had been away working in a lumber camp when Goliah had threatened Chloe with the gun, and when he came home and heard of it he was very angry, and said Bill had no right to let Goliah have the gun; that he had lent it to Bill when he was getting well from typhoid fever and able to walk about and shoot, because Bill's gun had been taken for debt, he never having paid for it after the first instalment.

Yesterday Elihu went to Bill's house and asked for the gun. Bill was out and his wife refused to give up the gun, upon which Elihu scolded her, no doubt in strong language, until finally she went to her trunk and took it out piece by piece, trying her best to convince him that she did not have all the parts. She ended, however, by giving them all up. When her mother came in she reviled her for being so meek spirited as to take a scolding from Elihu and give up the gun and proceeded to curse and abuse Elihu.

Of course he was not found wanting in retorts and a neighbor had to come in and make the peace. Elihu thought nothing more of it until he received a summons this morning from the so-called Judge to appear in court. He went with no idea of anything serious, had no witnesses even, but found that Dorcas's mother had indicted him.