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only Mrs. Buster, on whose skimpy-haired head a bump was pyramiding, could have justly complained of injury. She did so forthrightly. “You attacked me, Dolly Talbo, don’t deny it, everyone here is a witness, everyone saw you aim that mason jar at my head. Junius, arrest her!”
    The Sheriff, however, was involved in settling differences of his own. Hands on hips, swaggering, he bore down on the Judge, who was in the process of replacing the violets in his buttonhole. “If you weren’t so old, I’d damn well knock you down.”
    “I’m not so old, Junius: just old enough to think men ought not to fight in front of ladies,” said the Judge. He was a fair-sized man with strong shoulders and a straight body: though not far from seventy, he looked to be in his fifties. He clenched his fists and they were hard and hairy as coconuts. “On the other hand,” he said grimly, “I’m ready if you are.”
    At the moment it looked like a fair enough match. Even the Sheriff seemed not so sure of himself; with diminishing bravado, he spit between his fingers, and said Well, nobody was going to accuse him of hitting an old man. “Or standing up toone,” Judge Cool retorted. “Go on, Junius, tuck your shirt in your pants and trot along home.”
    The Sheriff appealed to us in the tree. “Save yourselves a lot of trouble: get out of there and come along with me now.” We did not stir, except that Dolly dropped her veil, as though lowering a curtain on the subject once for all. Mrs. Buster, the lump on her head like a horn, said portentously, “Never mind, Sheriff. They’ve had their chance,” and, eyeing Dolly, then the Judge, added: “You may imagine you are getting away with something. But let me tell you there will be a retribution—not in heaven, right here on earth.”
    “Right here on earth,” harmonized Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
    They left along the path, erect, haughty as a wedding procession, and passed into the sunlight where the red rolling grass swept up, swallowed them. Lingering under the tree, the Judge smiled at us and, with a small courteous bow, said: “Do I remember you offering a drumstick to anybody that would like it?”
    HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN PUT together from parts of the tree, for his nose was like a wooden peg, his legs were strong as old roots, and his eyebrows were thick, tough as strips of bark. Among the topmost branches were beards of silvery moss the color of his center-parted hair, and the cowhide sycamore leaves, sifting down from a neighboring taller tree, were the color of his cheeks. Despite his canny, tomcat eyes, the general impression his face made was that of someone shy and countrified. Ordinarily he was not the one to make a show of himself, Judge Charlie Cool; there were many who had taken advantage of his modesty to set themselves above him. Yet none of them could have claimed, as he could, to be a graduate of Harvard University or to have twice traveled in Europe. Still, there were those who were resentful and felt that he put on airs: wasn’t he supposed toread a page of Greek every morning before breakfast? and what kind of a man was it that would always have flowers in his buttonhole? If he wasn’t stuck up, why, some people asked, had he gone all the way to Kentucky to find a wife instead of marrying one of our own women? I do not remember the Judge’s wife; she died before I was old enough to be aware of her, therefore all that I repeat comes second-hand. So: the town never warmed up to Irene Cool, and apparently it was her own fault. Kentucky women are difficult to begin with, keyed-up, hellion-hearted, and Irene Cool, who was born a Todd in Bowling Green (Mary Todd, a second cousin once removed, had married Abraham Lincoln), let everyone around here know she thought them a backward, vulgar lot: she received none of the ladies of the town, but Miss Palmer, who did sewing for her, spread news of how she’d transformed the Judge’s house into a place of taste and style with