‘I oughter have let them hang him,’ Mr. Munn repeated meditatively.

  The negro came back with the drink.

  ‘It would’ve been convenient, all right,’ Mr. Sills said.

  ‘No,’ Professor Ball replied; ‘it would have been convenient, as matters have developed, but it wouldn’t have been right. Mr. Munn was serving the cause of justice. And not for hire. For the love of justice, than which there is no nobler sentiment in the human breast.’

  ‘I was a sucker,’ Mr. Munn said, with a trace of bitterness, ‘and this is what we get.’

  ‘No,’ Professor Ball rejoined; ‘justice is justice. You should have no regret.’

  ‘As a matter of fact ——’ Mr. Sills remarked, then coughed dryly, deprecatorily, while both of the other men looked at him.

  ‘Yes?’ Mr. Munn said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve wondered about that fellow Trevelyan. Before this came up. Maybe he was guilty.’

  ‘We found the knife,’ Mr. Munn said aggressively, ‘and the watch. What do you want for evidence?’

  ‘Well ——’

  ‘Well ——’ Mr. Munn repeated. ‘And God knows you couldn’t ever expect a jury to believe that story about the frog finding the knife. Now, could you?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t say you could. All I said was, maybe he was guilty. A feller who could do what he’s just done, could do ——’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Mr. Sills, I’d prefer not to discuss the case.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Mr. Sills answered. ‘The nigger is dead that had the knife, and you can’t unhang him. All I was saying was ——’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Sills, I don’t want to discuss it.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Mr. Sills said again, and shrugged slightly. Mr. Munn thought for an instant that he detected a flicker of amusement, or triumph, in Mr. Sills’ eyes, and anger gripped him. Then, scrutinizing Mr. Sills’ face, he wasn’t sure, it was so colorless, so unmoving. He took a quick gulp of his drink.

  ‘But this, gentlemen, now this,’ Professor Ball was saying — ‘this is more immediate. The other is past. And this, now, is serious.’

  ‘Serious enough,’ Mr. Sills agreed; then added, ‘But what to do, that’s the question.’

  ‘He took an oath,’ Professor Ball reminded them.

  Mr. Sills turned to Mr. Munn, saying: ‘Sorrell said he’d just about as soon pay the five hundred, even if it would sure pinch him a right smart, if he thought that’d settle anything. But he said it’d all happen again, sooner or later.’

  ‘He took an oath,’ Professor Ball said. ‘It was a sacred oath, before God, and we all took it.’

  Mr. Sills went on: ‘Mr. Sorrell said he was for running him out of the country. Even if that wouldn’t do any good, he said it would give him a lot of satisfaction.’

  ‘It was an oath,’ Professor Ball repeated once more.

  ‘Well?’ Mr. Sills demanded, almost peevishly, turning toward the old man.

  ‘Well ——’ Professor Ball was looking out the window at the blank brick wall beyond and the glaring light.

  ‘We can’t decide anything,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘It’s for the council to decide.’

  ‘And soon,’ Professor Ball added.

  Mr. Sills nodded his head, and repeated, ‘Soon.’

  ‘We can’t decide anything,’ Professor Ball continued. ‘We have no authority as individuals. But we just wanted to let you know, my boy, valuing your opinion the way we do.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘We just found out. We just happened to run into Mr. Sorrell, and he told us. He was upset, and he’d just come in to town —’ Professor Ball rose from his chair, and stretched forth his right hand, with its club-like bandage, toward Mr. Munn. ‘I must go now. Doctor MacDonald ought to be informed, and others. There should be a meeting of the council immediately.’

  ‘Good-bye, sir,’ Mr. Munn said, shaking hands.

  Professor Ball shook hands with Mr. Sills, picked up his hat from the table, and left the room.

  The two men remaining looked at each other for a second, but neither made a move to sit down.

  ‘Well ——’ Mr. Sills began.

  ‘It’s a God-damned mess,’ Mr. Munn declared. He looked nervously about the room, with the glance of a man who thinks he may have left something behind. Then he turned abruptly to Mr. Sills. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an appointment.’ He took out his watch. ‘I’m late for it now.’ He said good-bye and hurried out into the alley and up a side street toward the hotel.

  He waited for his mare, striding back and forth in the hallway of the livery stable, driving his heels into the soft, ripe-feeling substance underfoot, inhaling the ammoniac odor of the manure and the sweetness of the hay, while the negro man did the saddling and brought her out. His stomach felt cold and clotted, and at the same time the solid mass of the heat bore down on his body like the weight of water on a diver at great depth, a weight pressing surely and relentlessly at every point. He thought that he should not have taken that last drink.

  The negro brought out the mare.

  ‘Gitten tow’ds home early, ain’t you, Mister Perse?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ he said, hearing his own sharp, irritable tone, like the tone of a stranger, and experiencing an access of shame that, perversely, fanned the irritation so that he snapped his jaws shut and dug his heels into the mare’s flanks. She plunged as if stung by a fly, and then he found himself out of the shadow of the stable and in the sudden, vibrating glare of the afternoon.

  He rode straight out of town, out the Murray Mill Pike.

  He crossed the little wooden bridge over the branch, which was stagnant now and edged with a greenish, copperish scum, and drew rein even with the clump of cedar. There the buckberry bushes were, and some elder and sumac. The white dust from the road powdered the leaves of the bushes. It was this time of year, and this kind of season, dry like this with the dust accumulating undisturbed on the motionless leaves by the roadside, when Duffy had been killed. When the body fell, the white dust would have received it like a cushion, breaking the weight of the fall, and puffing out in a small, white cloud from the impact. The dust would have sucked up, instantly, whatever blood drained from the wounds. Then the body had been dragged off the road into the buckberry bushes. The murderer would have scraped his foot over the spot where the blood had drained from the wound into the dust. He would have looked up and down the road, quickly, and then he would have scraped his foot, almost automatically, over the spot. He would have done that.

  Standing beside the mare at the edge of the road, Mr. Munn stared down at the ground, as though some trace might remain. There was nothing, only the white dust. He mounted, and rode on.

  Trevelyan’s shack was precisely as he had remembered it, box-like, built of vertical boards from which the whitewash had scaled off a long time back, set flat on the bare, trodden ground. A large gum tree stood near the house, the earth seeming to recede from around its roots. Under the gum tree a hen was fluffing and wallowing in the dust. When Mr. Munn rode up to the gate, it left off, and went under the house.

  From the doorway, Trevelyan’s wife watched him as he approached and dismounted. He dropped the bridle over the sagging gatepost, and strode toward her over the turfless ground. She had her hands clasped together at the level of her waist. She was barefooted, and he noticed how her feet, which were streaked with dust, looked small and bony, like a child’s feet, even though she was not a small woman.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, and watched her face as she prepared to speak. In it there was a kind of preliminary gathering, an effort, that would come to focus in the word she would speak.

  ‘Howdy-do,’ she answered.

  ‘Is your husband here?’ he demanded.

  ‘He’s here,’ she said, nodding slowly.

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘If’n you’ll just step in, and set down,’ she replied, ‘I’ll git him. He’s a-choppen some stovewood, and if’n you’ll ——’ She let one of her hands move in a gesture of invitation that seemed to fail before it had well begun.

  He shook his head. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll just go back and talk to him, if you’ll tell me where he is.’

  ‘He’s in the back, a-choppen,’ she said. ‘But if’n you’ll step in ——’ She made a weak gesture.

  ‘No, thanks,’ he said, and moved quickly away. He did not want to be with the woman any longer.

  He turned the corner of the house, and passed under the boughs of the gum tree. He heard the sound of an axe stroke on wood, a sound thin but satisfying and clean in the emptiness of the afternoon. Then he saw Trevelyan. The man was some fifty yards back of the shack. Mr. Munn saw him swing up the axe, and caught the flash of the sun on the blade.

  When he was within some twenty feet, he called sharply, ‘Trevelyan!’ and then approached the man, who leaned lightly on his axe, waiting.

  ‘Howdy-do,’ Trevelyan said.

  ‘Trevelyan,’ Mr. Munn began, and stepped to a position directly in front of him, ‘I understand you tried to blackmail Mr. Tom Sorrell. For five hundred dollars.’

  Trevelyan’s impassive face did not change, or changed only by a slight narrowing of the eyes, as though the light were, for the moment, too great. He said nothing.

  ‘I want to know. Now.’

  ‘I ain’t a-messen in yore bizness,’ Trevelyan said, measuring his words out, not looking at Mr. Munn now, but off at the horizon, his eyes squinting, ‘an’ I don’t aim to have no man messen in mine.’

  ‘I want to know. And no lie.’

  ‘Lie! Ain’t air man ——’ Trevelyan’s hand tightened on the axe handle, and over the big knuckle bones the red, too-thin skin whitened.

  ‘You fool,’ Mr. Munn said evenly, ‘you’ve got a place here, and, by God, now ——’

  ‘Fifteen acres,’ Trevelyan answered, and spat into the dust, ‘and ever God’s foot mortgaged.’

  ‘— and, by God, now you go and fix it so you’ll have to leave the country. You do that, and those men the only friends you had ——’

  ‘Naw, naw,’ Trevelyan interrupted, and he turned his eyes, still squinting, upon Mr. Munn; ‘naw, they ain’t no friends of mine. They ain’t done nuthen fer me. I ain’t beholden to ’em. To no man.’

  ‘Well, they might do something for you now, something you won’t like, Trevelyan. I’m not saying, but I’m saying this: you better clear out. And now. Now. Today, not tomorrow. Here ——’ Mr. Munn pulled a wallet from his pocket and took two bills, a ten and a five. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘here, you take this and clear out. Now.’

  Trevelyan only looked at the money, his face unchanging.

  ‘You clear out. Far as it’ll take you. You write me where you are. I’ll let you know when to come back.’ Mr. Munn’s voice sank lower, hurrying, while he thrust the money toward the big man, almost touching the sweat-stained blue cloth of his shirt. ‘I’ll see your crop’s cut and fired. Like I did before. I’ll ——’

  ‘Hit ain’t worth a toot,’ Trevelyan said.

  ‘I’ll see it taken care of.’ He thrust the money forward.

  Trevelyan was shaking his head, slowly. ‘Naw, hit ain’t worth a toot. Let hit rot in the field, fer all of me. But I ain’t a-leave-en. Ain’t no man gonna run me outer no country.’

  ‘You fool!’ Mr. Munn crumpled the money in his hand. His voice rose. ‘You fool, you clear out. Now. You don’t know.’

  Trevelyan unhurriedly spat, then looked away. ‘I was aimen to git out,’ he said. ‘I was aimen to git me that money from that bastud and git out. Oklahoma, and git me a start. They say a man kin git a start.’ He finished, pausing almost as though in reminiscence.

  ‘Now!’ Mr. Munn insisted.

  ‘Naw, not now. Ain’t no man a-tellen me to git out. No man. Not even you, nor no mortal man.’

  ‘It’s no favor to me,’ Mr. Munn said bitterly, ‘your going. I ought to let come what will come. I haven’t got any claim on you. It’s you got a claim on me. Because I was fool enough to pull your neck out of the rope once.’

  ‘I never ast you,’ Trevelyan retorted.

  ‘Your wife did.’

  ‘I never ast you and I never knowed when she done hit. You done hit because you wanted to. I never ast no man fer nuthen. Not since I was born. You done hit because you wanted.’

  ‘I damn well wish I hadn’t,’ Mr. Munn declared.

  ‘I’d a-got off,’ Trevelyan said.

  ‘They’d hanged you, Trevelyan. You know it, they’d hanged you. They’d put a rope round your neck, Trevelyan ——’ Mr. Munn made a circle, like a noose, with forefingers and thumbs, and held it to the man’s gaze and shook his hands back and forth. The two bills had fluttered to the ground between them.

  ‘I’d a-got off,’ Trevelyan said.

  ‘But that don’t matter now. Not now,’ Mr. Munn went on, jerking his hands apart. With the extended forefinger of his right hand he stabbed once at the sweat-soaked blue cloth which covered the man’s chest. ‘Now it matters for you to go. I’m telling you because I got you off the other time. That’s why I’m telling you, and I mean it.’ He leaned closer to Trevelyan, not eight inches between their bodies, and stared upward at his face. ‘Now go!’ he commanded.

  ‘No,’ Trevelyan answered.

  Mr. Munn stepped backward a long, quick pace, as though he had been slapped in the face. ‘All right,’ he said, his voice suddenly quiet, ‘all right, you poor, God-damned fool.’

  ‘Ain’t no man e’er put a skeer on me,’ Trevelyan said.

  Mr. Munn stared at Trevelyan for a moment. Then he struck his palms together, once. The impact made a dry, flat sound. Somewhere, off in the bushes, an insect made a rasping note, twice repeated.

  Mr. Munn swung round, grinding his heel on the sun-baked earth. He took three strides toward the house, without looking back.

  ‘Hey!’ Trevelyan called.

  Mr. Munn looked back.

  ‘You’re leave-en yore money,’ Trevelyan said. He glanced dispassionately at the ground before his feet where the bills lay.

  ‘You’ll need it,’ Mr. Munn told him, and turned away.

  ‘Hit kin lay and rot,’ Trevelyan answered.

  After he had passed the corner of the house, he heard the axe stroke on the wood. He hurried across the yard, and mounted his horse. The woman was standing in the doorway of the house. He averted his eyes from her, and she said nothing. As he wheeled his horse, he caught, out of the tail of his eye, the flash of sun on the swift arc of the descending axe.

  He rode down the short, brush-bordered lane leading to the big road. On the right-hand side was a field of tobacco. It was Trevelyan’s tobacco. The stalks were spindly and drooping, and the leaves, dry-looking, hung from the stalks. They did not loop strongly away from the base, but sagged as though their fibers had long lost strength and resilience. Between the tobacco hills, even on the hills, the ground was dry, packed, cracked-looking. It had a grayish cast.

  ‘Crawfish ground,’ Mr. Munn said aloud; ‘crawfish ground.’

  Looking at that field, the miserable, drouth-bitten plants and the badly cultivated earth, and the blaze of sunlight over it, he felt a surge of hatred, or of something near hatred, for Trevelyan. He had not had such a feeling earlier.

  He rode on, to the pike. He passed the spot where the cedar grove and the buckberry bushes were. He knew, even as he fought against the knowledge, the remembrance, that he had ridden toward Trevelyan’s house with the full intention of asking him if he had killed Duffy. He had been going to say, ‘Trevelyan, you killed that man. Answer me.’ He had not said it. He had said something else. He had been afraid. But not of Trevelyan.

  Except for the temperature — and even the night tonight was coolish, too, for it was getting on in August — it might have been that other night when he had ridden out this road, with the two deputies, almost a year ago now. It is the same road, he thought, and I am the same man and I am doing the same thing, but it is a different time and it is a different thing, or is it a different thing, only a different time? — for then I rode here to find the knife and my riding here now is part of that same act, completing itself, fulfilling a single thought, the same gesture or an act of the will.

  The men rode, single file, behind him. Except for the soft soughing of hoofs in the dust, or the infrequent, padded chink of a horseshoe on a stone, there had been no sound for a long way. The men had not spoken a word.

  Or is it a different thing, he thought, part of the same motion fulfilling a single act of will? But not his own will, it occurred to him. Not entirely his own. In this, now, there is no will, not mine nor anybody’s, for there is no will in the act in memory, for it is complete and is in one time out of time, he thought; for as he moved down the road, thinking of that other night, he felt removed, even now, from the present experience, as though it were in memory.

  He had felt that way when he reached into the hat and picked up one of the acorns and drew it out and opened his hand and saw that it was the yellow one. Mr. Burden had said, ‘Well, if we’re gonna do it, we might get it over with,’ and had gone outside the schoolhouse and fumbled about by the light of matches under the oak tree in the yard. He had come back into the silent group, and had asserted, extending his hand: ‘There’s a yellow one here. Might as well let it be the one.’

  ‘Let everybody look at them good,’ Mr. Sills had said. ‘We don’t want any argument later.’

  ‘Not much,’ Doctor MacDonald had agreed, smiling.

  Mr. Munn had found the yellow acorn in his hand. ‘Well,’ he remarked, looking at it, ‘that’s it.’ He had lifted his glance from the object to find the eyes of all the men fixed upon him, detaching him from them.

  Doctor MacDonald had come to stand in front of Mr. Munn. ‘I’ll go with you all,’ he had offered.

  ‘It won’t be necessary,’ Mr. Munn had said.

  ‘Not necessary,’ Doctor MacDonald had answered, ‘but I don’t want to pass any responsibility.’

  ‘No,’ Mr. Munn had said. He had twisted the yellow acorn slowly in his fingers.