"Catch the—scoundre—him!"
"Joe," said the Judge, "slip away! He recognizes you as the assailant yesterday. Don't hesitate: see how he glares at you!"
"Oh, it's the billy-noodle with the steeple nab-cheat, him that settled me with the brick," said the stranger, in a low voice. "So I have piped him. Ah! that's plumby!"
As the tall man started to go Milburn's countenance relaxed, he wandered again in his head, and fell back upon the bed.
"I told you he was a hard hater, Mr. Johnson," the Judge remarked.
"Them shakes is the equivvy for the bruise he give me,—that is, till we both heal up. He's painted the ensigns of all nations on my stummick, Judge. But a blow is cured by a blow!"
With a look of admiring computation upon the girl Virgie, Joe Johnson drew his long figure down the stairs, like a pole.
"What a brutal giant," Vesta said; "and how came he to be doing our errands?"
"Why, Aunt Hominy hadn't nobody to bring the wheelbarrow load, and this man said he'd come, and he would come, Miss Vesty, so I couldn't say anything."
"He's a man of a good deal of influence," said the Judge, uneasily, "in the upper part of our county, and in Delaware. Last night, after the wedding, he slapped Meshach's hat, and old Samson knocked him down for it, and he would have killed Samson, I hear, but for your bridegroom, who felled him with a timely brick. It's a hard team to pass on a narrow road,—Meshach and Samson; hey, Virgie?"