It was a Saturday afternoon, in summer. About a mile outside the village four roads met. It was not the first time; they had always done it, as far back as the oldest resident of the region could remember; and so, if any one was ever surprised at it you could know him for a stranger by that sign. The blacksmith shop was there; also a solitary vast live-oak, which stretched its limbs straight out fifty feet, and no matter how many of the outlying farmers gathered there to wait while their horses were shod, they did not need to wait in the sun, there was shade enough and to spare. They were always coming and going, Saturday afternoons, but they did not hurry their going, for that was the central gossip-exchange for a wide stretch of country round about, and in that old simple day supplied the place of the lacking newspaper.

Several farmers were lolling in the shade on this particular afternoon, talking, and smoking their cob pipes. Ordinarily they would have been discussing the weather and the crops, then last [begin page 572] Sunday's sermon; afterward the gossip-mill would begin to grind; but now there was only one topic. A great and unusual event had occurred, and it had paled all other interests. Walter Baldwin had been horse-whipping Jake Bleeker. What for, nobody knew. Bleeker refused to say, and no one had inquired of Baldwin. Baldwin was the most respected man in those parts, a man of fine character and reputation, a good man; but the people stood in some little awe of him, for in mind and education he was rather their superior, and although he was friendly and courteous with all, he was a little reserved in his ways, and not really familiar with any. Everybody liked him, everybody was glad to talk with him and visit him and be visited by him, and everybody privately regarded his friendship as an honor; but no one of them all would have thought of asking him why he had horse-whipped Jake Bleeker. All wondered, with a strenuous and persecuting curiosity, what it could possibly have been that had carried his temper so far, for it had been many years since he had allowed it to get the best of him —not, indeed, since he was a young bachelor and once in a sudden rage had come near killing a man. He was in liquor at the time, and from that day forth had wholly ceased from drinking and had kept a stern guard over his hot disposition. He was getting toward fifty, now. He was a widower, with no family except two daughters, aged eighteen and twenty respectively. He loved them deeply, and they loved him—under limitations. In one regard he failed of their approval: he was not strongly interested in religious matters, and did not go to church, whereas religion was not merely an interest with them, it was a passion; their mother had had it before them.

Baldwin had not an enemy. George Harrison disliked him, but he was not an enemy. The dislike dated back to a time when the two were boys together, and if it had ever had a special origin, neither of them would now have been able to recall what it was.

Jake Bleeker worked in George Harrison's grist mill, and was a German. He had a wife, but no children living. He had been in America many years, and spoke good enough English. He always spoke it, except when angry or startled; then he was apt to revert to his mother tongue. On those occasions he was unintelligible to everybody except George Harrison, his employer, who, in the [begin page 573] course of years, had gathered from him a smattering of his language. Harrison was a favorite. He was a good-hearted man, clean and upright, blithe and cheery, and conspicuously kind and compassionate and humane. He was possessed of a peculiarly nice sense of honor, and it was said of him that he could neither be persuaded nor driven to do a thing which he thought wrong.

The men under the live-oak talked the horse-whipping over at great length, and all kinds of guesses were made as to the nature of the provocation that had brought it about, but no satisfactory result was reached, of course. In the course of the talk it came out that there was a report that Baldwin was under the influence of liquor when he did the cowhiding. That piece of news made a great stir. But was it believable? Could it really be true?

“Burt will know,” said Reuben Hoskins; “I'll go and ask him.”

That was Burt Higgins, the blacksmith. Hoskins was soon back, and said—

“It's so; he was under the influence; Jake told Burt so.”

It was decided, all around, that this detail was exceedingly important.

“It's twenty-two years since he touched a drop or lost his grip on his temper,” said Park Robinson. “Why, it must have been something awful to stir him up like that, and knock all his props out from under him at one slam.”

“I wonder what his girls think of the business?” said Sam Griswold.

“Think of it?” said Hoskins; “Burt says they're clean killed, and ashamed to look anybody in the face; he says they packed right up and left for their aunt Mary's, in the village, and ain't coming back till they've cried it out.”

There was a general hum, but whether it signified approval, or pity, or what, was not determinable. The afternoon was far spent. The men unhitched their horses and prepared to ride. As they mounted, the blacksmith appeared at his door, untying his leather apron and delivering his good-byes, and the men asked him how Jake Bleeker was feeling about the matter.

“How does he take it?”

“Jake? Well, the way he carries on, you never see anything like [begin page 574] it. But he's so raging mad you can't make much out of it, because he does the most of it in Dutch, the way he always does when his temper's up. Says he'll get even, if it's the last act; says he'll play him a trick, first thing he knows, that'll make him ashamed he was born; that he won't forget for one spell, anyway. Keeps saying that, then he goes off into Dutch again.”