"What do you mean by bringing his name in?" Burton asked sternly.
"It looks like his work all right. More than one fire has been started by him in High Ridge before this. There are people who haven't forgotten his tricks here six years ago, writing letters about his father, and burning clothes and keeping the whole place stirred up. I'm not surprised he has come to this."
"He ought to be hung for this, that's what he ought," burst in Mrs. Sprigg. "Burning people's houses over their heads, in the dead of night! Hanging's too good for him."
"You have not an atom of evidence to go on," cried Burton, exasperated into argument. "You might just as well accuse me, or Mr. Selby, or any one else. Henry Underwood has no ill-will against you,--"
"The doctor said that fire would come and burn the children up; Mr. Hadley heard him."
"That was nonsense. I heard what he said, too. He was just joking. Besides, that was the doctor, it wasn't Henry."
"If the doctor had a wanted to a done it, he could," said an old man, judicially. "He knows too much for his own good, he does, and too much for the good of the people that go agin him. 'Tain't safe to go agin him. He can make you lay on your back all your life, like he done with Ben Bussey. He'd a been well long afore this if the doctor had treated him right."
"Come away from this," said Burton in a low voice to Leslie. "You see you can do no good. There is no reason why you should endure this."
She let him guide her through the crowd, but as they turned away, Selby called to Burton:
"You say we haven't any evidence. I'm going to get it. There is no one in High Ridge but Henry Underwood who would do such a trick, and I am going to prove it against him. We've stood this just long enough."