Giant Bluff came back that evening breathing out threats of slaughter. Before midnight it was noised all about our village that he had sworn to shoot Uncle Abram on sight. The old driver was warned by a group of excited boys who found him serenely smoking over a game of checkers and were quite unable to interest him in their tidings. But the next day, when the station platform was well filled with our business men waiting for the eight o'clock into town, Uncle Abram drove up to the depot and reined in Daniel Webster just against the spot where Giant Bluff was standing, a little aloof for the reason that nobody cared to stand with him.
Taken by surprise as Uncle Abram coolly looked him over, Giant Bluff, unexpectedly to himself, said:
"Good morning."
"Ez good a mornin' ez God ever made."
Giant Bluff, who prided himself on his atheism, began to swagger.
"That's stuff and nonsense. Only babies and fools believe such rubbish nowadays."
"Thet so? Ain't no God, eh, and he never made no mornin's? Wal! Maybe ye'll put me in the way of findin' out about quite a few little things like that. I've hearn tell thet ye're goin' to shoot me, an' my rheumatiz is so bad this summer thet I'd be obleeged if ye'd shoot me right now an' hev it over."
"You—you insulted my wife," gasped Giant Bluff.
"Not a nary," protested Uncle Abram, with a touch of indignant color in his weather-beaten cheeks. "I said I didn't know whether the lady thet come to the door was your wife or not, an' no more I didn't. I hedn't never seen her afore. But even s'posin' thet your morals didn't hurt you none, do ye think I'd let it out to a stranger? No, siree; I'd a kep my mouth shet, for the credit o' the town. An' now thet I've had my say on thet little misunderstandin', ye kin shoot me ez soon ez ye like."
The crowded platform roared for joy, the opportune train came in, and Giant Bluff, the first to swing aboard, was not seen in the village again for a fortnight. So it came to pass that he was but newly acquainted with Emilius.