You've loafed on me ever since I hired ye." "That's a"-- -- Lime checked himself for Marietta's sake, and the enraged father went on: "I hired ye t' cut wood, an' you've gone an' fooled my daughter away from me.

Now you jest figger up what I owe ye, and git out o' here.

Ye can't go too soon t' suit _me_." Bacon was renowned as the hardest man in Cedar County to handle, and though he was getting old, he was still a terror to his neighbors when roused.

He was honest, temperate, and a good neighbor until something carried him off his balance; then he became as cruel as a panther and as savage as a grizzly.

All this Lime knew, but it did not keep his anger down so much as did the thought of Marietta.