"Wal, if he hadn't a lammed one feller with a bucket he'd a been laid out sure. So Richards says; as it is, it's the other feller that has the head." She laughed to see the girl's face grow rosy again.
"Then—Mr. Ramsey isn't hurt?"
"Not a scratch! The funny part of it is, they've been going around here for a week, quiet as you please. I wouldn't have known anything about it only for Richards."
"Oh, isn't it dreadful?" said the girl.
"Yes, 'tis!" the elder woman readily agreed; "but why don't you ask what it was all about?"
"Oh, I don't want to know anything more about it; it's too terrible."
Mrs. Richards was approaching the climax.
"It was all about you."
The girl could not realize what part she should have with a disgraceful row in the barnyard of her uncle's farm.
"Yes, these men—they're regular tramps; I told Richards so the first time I set eyes on 'em—they made a little free with your name, and Art he overheard them and he went for 'em, and they both come at him, two to one, and he lammed both out in a minute—so Richards says. Now I call that splendid; don't you? A young feller that'll stand up for his girl ag'in two big tramps——"