“What things?”
“Old Uncle Mose and Blinkey Bill come first,” Donald’s brow wrinkled. “Blinkey Bill claims he owns the coal rights on Uncle Mose’s land. He’s stopped him mining coal there. Old tight wad! That’s making things hard for Uncle Mose. No coal to mine. Poor old Mose and his wife will starve. Think of it, the oldest couple in the mountains! You’d think—”
“There’s nothing fair about it,” Johnny broke in. “I doubt if Blinkey Bill owns the coal rights on that land. If he does, his father got it by some sharper methods that Uncle Mose didn’t understand. And Uncle Mose didn’t get a thing for it, you can be sure of that.”
“Thing is,” Donald turned to Johnny, “you and Ballard have got to play your part, sort of work up the psychology, my professor would say. This evening,” his voice dropped, “just before dark, you boys just happen by Blinkey Bill’s house and stop to talk. He’ll say:
“‘Jest come up and set a while and rest yourself,’ he always does. So you just go up and set.” He laughed a low laugh.
“And while you set,” he went on, “you start talking about Uncle Mose, what a hard time he has, how old he is and how wicked it would be if any one would take a mean advantage of him. Just get Blinkey Bill to feeling about as low down as the hind leg of a glow worm.
“Then just casually,” he took a long breath, “just slow like, as if it sort of occurred to you, say something about how deadly lightning can be, especially when it comes out of a clear sky.
“The sky’s going to be real clear tonight,” he added as if it were an afterthought.
“Yes,” Johnny agreed, guessing he knew what would happen. “It’s going to be uncommonly clear.”
Sometime later, an hour after darkness had fallen, Johnny and Ballard found themselves seated on hickory-bottomed chairs on Blinkey Bill’s porch. They had been there for some time and had talked considerable, especially about poor Uncle Mose. Blinkey Bill had listened and as he listened, had appeared to shrink deeper and deeper into his chair. When, however, Johnny said quite suddenly: