Only once did Mr. Munn see a change in him. It was on a gusty Sunday morning. A man who lived down the pike from the Ball place rode up to the gate, dismounted, and approached the house. Doctor MacDonald, watching him walk up the rise toward the house, said idly, ‘There comes Parsons; wonder what he wants.’ Parsons had come to deliver a message. Mr. Sills had been trying to get the Ball place on the telephone, he said, but the line was down. Coming up, he had seen an old gum tree fallen across the line down the pike a piece. It was so rotten it was ready to come down if you looked hard at it, anyway. But Mr. Sills thought Doctor MacDonald ought to know that a gang of men had taken out a Mr. Elkins over near Bardsville the night before and whipped him with a whip. The men had beat on the door and told Mr. Elkins to come out or they would put dynamite under the house, and he had come on out because he was afraid for his wife and family. They whipped him, then they got the wife and children out and dynamited the house anyway. They just hurt one wing of the house, though, Mr. Parsons said. Nobody knew exactly why they did it.

  ‘It don’t matter why,’ Doctor MacDonald interrupted, and rose from his chair and strode to the hearth.

  ‘One of them said it was because Mr. Elkins didn’t fire his nigger tenants,’ Mr. Parsons said, ‘and then again some of them said it was because he wasn’t in the Association. But they was all drinking hard, it looks like, saying one thing and another.’

  ‘It don’t matter why,’ Doctor MacDonald declared. His long face was pale with the fury that was growing in him. ‘It just matters who. By God, if I just knew who!’

  ‘Mr. Elkins was an anti-Association man,’ Mr. Parsons observed, as though in placation.

  Doctor MacDonald wheeled at him. ‘I don’t care if he was president of the Alta Company; I don’t care if he’s anti or not. They did it without authority. If they’re Association people did it, they did it without authority. If they’re not Association ——’ He paused, his hands clenching and unclenching about the pipe he held.

  ‘They’re not Association,’ Professor Ball said; ‘they’re not our people.’

  The stem of the pipe in Doctor MacDonald’s hands snapped. He flung the thing into the fire, turned on his heel, and went out the door without a word.

  Our people, Mr. Munn thought. Then asked, ‘Our people, who are they?’

  ‘It was that fellow Lew Smullin phoning saved me,’ Doctor MacDonald said. ‘But by the barest. Yes, sir, there wasn’t a minute to spare. It was getting on toward sundown, but nearer dark than you might expect for the time it was — it’d been raining off and on all day and still overcast, and promising to drizzle — and that was luck, too, I reckon. I’d just got in from making my rounds and was getting dried out in front of the fire, when the telephone rang and Viola answered it and said it was for me. It was that fellow Smullin. He just said, right fast and near a whisper, This is Smullin, Smullin, over at the courthouse, they got a warrant out for you and they’re coming, with soldiers; they been gone quite a spell. Then he hung up, quick, before I really caught on what he was saying. By that time Portia and my wife’d come in, and I told them not to get excited, but the soldiers were coming to arrest me, and I was going to get my horse and get out the back way by the old road they used to get timber out by. You’ll have to hand it to those girls now; they didn’t do any cutting-up. They didn’t say a word. Cordelia went sort of white, and took hold of the back of a chair with one hand. Then she said, All right, I’ll go down to the stable with you while you saddle up.

  ‘But Portia said no, that wasn’t the thing to do. That they’d be watching the back, if they had any sense. And I said, well, the Lord knows they’ll be watching the front if they’re here, and I’d take my chances. She didn’t answer me, just looked out the window. Then she said to Viola, just like she was telling her to do something round the house — Portia, she’s boss in the house here — she said, Viola, get me the bandage box. Viola let her jaw drop and looked at Portia for a second, and I guess my jaw dropped some too at her asking for the bandage box. But Portia said, Viola, this is no time to delay. And Viola ran off. Then Portia said, Cordelia, you go to the stable, quick, and saddle up papa’s horse. I said no, I’d saddle up and I didn’t want the Professor’s horse, I wanted my own. You know that old gray horse the Professor rides round is so fat it can’t go better’n a walk. But she grabbed my arm, and said to Cordelia, go on, do it. And said to me, pull off your coat, quick. Look here, I said to her, who’s this warrant for, you or me? I’m going to get my horse. Then she said, Take off your coat, Hugh, so we can bandage up your hands. I burst right out laughing. For a fact. Then they just bandaged me up, like the Professor. And they got one of the Professor’s old long, black coats and I put it on — both of us being tall and spare-made — and one of his old black hats that flop down. Then we went down to the stable, where Cordelia had his old gray horse saddled up. Soon as I got on, Portia said, Turn your coat collar up, and hang your head down like papa when he’s riding along thinking, and they can’t see you haven’t got a beard.

  ‘Well, I met them down the road a piece. Not a long piece, either. About a half-dozen of soldiers, and two or three deputies, I reckon. I just lifted up my hand the way the Professor does when he meets somebody on the road, and prayed the Old Marster’d make those bastards notice the bandages and all. Well, they did. One of the deputies said, Good evening, Professor Ball, and I rode on with my chin dug down in my breastbone so hard it hurt, just like I was the Professor busy thinking.

  ‘I went on over to the Campbell place and spent the night. They almost busted a hame laughing when they got a good look at me, too. But it was just as well, Portia figured it out. I couldn’t got out that old back road if I’d tried. There was soldiers out there, too. Those soldiers I met on the road wasn’t but half of them, the others coming round on the old road and scattering out back. They’d a-picked me up, sure. You’ll have to hand it to Portia, now. She’s a smart one.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘a smart one.’

  ‘But I reckon it’s going to be laying low a spell for me,’ Doctor MacDonald said, ‘like I been doing for more’n ten days now. I been spelling round in different people’s houses, the Campbells and Donelsons and Nelsons most, but not a night or two at a place in succession. — Night, did I say night? I been doing most of my sleeping in the daytime, and up half the night tending to my patients. Looks like it comes a spell of wet weather and the roads mire up or a fellow gets in a fix like this or one way or another, and everybody in the damned county goes and gets down sick and wants you to doctor them. Cordelia or some of them gets the calls at the house and they pass them on to me ——’

  ‘They’ll hook you,’ Mr. Munn said fatalistically, ‘if you aren’t careful. They’ll hook you on a fake call.’

  ‘Play sick to hook me,’ Doctor MacDonald retorted, ‘and I’ll make somebody sick. I’ll take him apart unless God-a-mighty’s got a new way patented for putting a man’s parts together. I’ll take him apart like a clock.’ He seemed pleased with himself, smiling. Then, soberly, he added: ‘What I can’t figure is why they up all at once and try to get me. They been round here quite a spell now, and they just suddenly up and try to get me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘They figure they got some evidence now that’ll stand up in a court of law. I don’t know what it is, but that’s it. They think their evidence’ll stand up.’

  ‘They got next to somebody.’

  ‘Sure,’ Mr. Munn agreed. ‘Somebody.’

  ‘They never would’ve known to lay for the boys at Fulton’s plant bed if they hadn’t got next to somebody. And get Turpin and Mosely.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’m glad it’s Turpin and Mosely sitting over there in the jail-house, and not me.’

  ‘They won’t give them bail,’ Mr. Munn said.

  ‘Well, you can be durned sure, then, they wouldn’t give me bail if they got me. But they won’t get me. I don’t like to be indoors so much. Just let me sit round the house a couple of days and I need calomel, damned if I don’t. I’ll just stay outer their way till they get tired and call off the dogs.’

  ‘If they’ve got evidence, they won’t get tired soon.’

  ‘Neither will I,’ Doctor MacDonald said cheerfully, ‘long as folks’ll put up with all the visiting round I been doing lately.’

  ‘They won’t get tired,’ Mr. Munn replied slowly, ‘unless ——’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless the Association’ll play ball. Make a deal.’

  ‘Which it won’t do,’ Doctor MacDonald said.

  ‘Unless,’ Mr. Munn remarked quietly, ‘they catch you. Then they’ll try to force a deal by putting the pressure on you. On whoever else they can get. Me, for instance.’

  ‘They won’t catch me,’ Doctor MacDonald announced. ‘It ain’t in them.’ He lay back at ease, propped on his elbow on the bed, and the smoke curled comfortably up from his pipe. His boots, damp and stained with half-dried mud, stood by the bed. He wriggled his toes in his heavy wool socks, and complacently studied their motion. ‘Another thing I can’t figure,’ he said, ‘is Smullin calling me up and telling me about the warrant. Never saw the man half a dozen times in my life. Never said more’n howdy-do then.’

  ‘I’ve seen him a lot, being round the courthouse the way I am,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘but I can’t say I know him, exactly. Nobody does. He never says a thing. Just hangs round a bunch of men, on the edge; one of those fellows — you know the kind — they hang round on the edge and never say a thing.’

  ‘He’s sure a God-forsaken, broken-down-looking old bastard.’

  ‘He’s that,’ Mr. Munn agreed.

  ‘Well, I can’t figure out him calling up. You’d figure him sucking along with the gang at the courthouse. And all they want is to keep on warming chairs with their fat asses.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Mr. Munn said meditatively — ‘maybe he just didn’t want to see you get caught.’

  ‘Hell,’ Doctor MacDonald exclaimed, ‘he ain’t a farmer, what does he care?’

  ‘Maybe he just cared,’ Mr. Munn answered. ‘Maybe he’s a damned fool.’

  ‘Damned fool is right.’ Doctor MacDonald laughed. He flexed his long legs, rumpling the patchwork quilt on which he lay. ‘I reckon he was taking a chance on his job, calling me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘he was.’ Yes, he thought. All those years dragging his club foot round town, trying to sell a little life insurance or hail insurance or fire insurance to people. Hanging round groups of men at the post office or the depot or on the street corner, trying to get up nerve to say to somebody, ‘I wonder if you’d be interested in some insurance, now I was just wondering ——’ And then stopping, waiting for the man to answer, ‘No.’ And going home at night to the little house at the edge of town. Nobody else had been in that house, not for years, not since his old mother, Mrs. Smullin, died, people said. Going home, and lighting a lamp and pulling down all the shades, and eating something off the kitchen table. Something he’d bought and taken home in a paper sack. All that before getting the job, God knew how, at the courthouse. Now he could sit round there in the afternoons and evenings, listening to the men talk. He didn’t have to try to work himself up to say, ‘I wonder if you’d be interested, I was just wondering ——’ He could just hang round and listen, and not worry. Except for being a damned fool, and making that telephone call.

  ‘He came mighty near waiting too long; another five minutes and they’d have had me,’ Doctor MacDonald was saying.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn rejoined.

  ‘A miss is as good as a mile, though,’ Doctor MacDonald said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope he don’t lose his job,’ Doctor MacDonald remarked. Then: ‘He sure didn’t stand to gain anything. The poor old fool.’

  Mr. Munn studied him. ‘There’re a lot of fools,’ he observed. ‘You,’ he said slowly, ‘for instance. You’re a fool. What did you stand to gain? All you stood to gain was to have to hide out to keep from jail.’

  ‘Or the rope,’ Doctor MacDonald answered, ‘if the bastards can play it their way.’

  ‘We’re all damned fools. A lot of us, anyway.’

  ‘People are damned fools in different ways. They got different stuff in them.’

  ‘You can’t figure out Smullin,’ Mr. Munn told him. ‘Well, I can’t figure you out.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Doctor MacDonald returned amiably. ‘Been trying for years. But I can’t do it.’ He leaned back comfortably, shoving the pillow.

  ‘I can’t figure myself out,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘sometimes.’

  Doctor MacDonald let the smoke drift easily from his nostrils. He glanced up at the low ceiling, as though in reflection; then about the room, letting his eyes rest upon the steady flame of the lamp on the dresser, and then, casually, upon Mr. Munn’s face. ‘I reckon a man goes his gait,’ he said, and yawned.

  They said nothing for a time. Then Doctor MacDonald swung his legs off the bed and rose. He said that he had to go out and see one of his patients, and that he’d be back some before day. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled on his boots. Then he went across to the dresser and peered at himself in the mirror. He ran a comb through his bushy hair, yawned once, and stretched his arms above his head, almost touching the low ceiling, filling the room, making his shadow on the wall behind him look like a big, awkward bird. Then he said, ‘So long,’ and went out the door.

  Mr. Munn slept there at the Campbells’. He scarcely woke up when Doctor MacDonald came in. In the morning, Mr. Munn dressed as quietly as possible in order not to wake him. He was sprawled out on his side of the bed, snoring gently, with his long, bony head thrust into the pillow and one big hand grasping the bedpost, as though sleep itself were not a passivity, but was at its secret core, when all the accidents of softness and ease had been stripped away, an act of will and tension.

  Mr. Munn managed to get out without waking him. He did not see him again until the night the troops came again to the Ball place for him.

  They tried to circle the house and to close in, slowly, on foot; but the dogs scented them. The dogs barked wildly and throatily, rushing away from the house, filling the woods to the west of the house with a distant, hollow clamor, vibrant as in a cave.

  ‘It don’t sound very encouraging,’ Doctor MacDonald remarked. He leaned forward in his chair, drawing his legs under him, easily but as though in readiness to rise.

  Mr. Munn said nothing. He was listening to the dogs. One of them was circling, swinging back.

  ‘Durn it,’ Doctor MacDonald exclaimed, almost peevishly, ‘can’t they leave a man alone? And this the second night I been home in three weeks.’

  The door to the next room swung softly open. Cordelia stood there. Her hand was on the knob, and she did not move. She said nothing. Behind her, seated around a lamp, were the others, with their heads lifted to listen.

  ‘Maybe it’s not that,’ Mr. Munn suggested. But the barking was closer, and circling.

  ‘Durn,’ Doctor MacDonald said, and stood upright from the chair in a sudden motion.

  The dogs were retreating toward the house. Their barking was furious, deep-throated, incessant.

  Professor Ball stood behind Cordelia at the door.

  ‘Come here,’ Doctor MacDonald commanded, and Cordelia came to him. She laid her hand on his arm.

  ‘Don’t get excited,’ he told her.

  The others crowded into the room.

  ‘Do those kids know I’m here?’ Doctor MacDonald demanded.

  ‘No,’ Portia said, ‘they don’t know.’

  The dogs were near now.

  ‘If it is anything, I can’t get out now,’ Doctor MacDonald asserted. ‘They’re all round.’

  The others looked at each other, not speaking; except Cordelia, whose eyes were on Doctor MacDonald’s face.

  ‘I’ll try the loft,’ Doctor MacDonald said.

  Professor Ball moved toward the hall door, Portia by his side.

  ‘No,’ Doctor MacDonald ordered. ‘Sit down. Go sit down like you were.’ They stood and looked at him. ‘Like you were,’ he said sharply. ‘Be talking, or something. I’ll get in the loft and pull the ladder up after me.’ Almost casually, he removed Cordelia’s hand from his sleeve, then turned and was at the hall door in three abrupt, plunging strides.

  They heard his feet heavy on the bare boards of the stairs.

  ‘Where’s Isabella?’ Portia suddenly demanded.

  No one answered, each looking questioningly at the others.

  Portia started toward the hall door. ‘I’ll get her,’ she said.

  ‘Sit down,’ Professor Ball directed. ‘It’s too late. Sit down, like he said.’ He laid an arm around Cordelia’s shoulders, then withdrew it. ‘Go sit down,’ he repeated, ‘in yonder.’ He raised his right hand and, clumsily because of the knobby bandages, plucked at his beard.

  On the porch, one of the dogs barked frenziedly. There was a pounding at the door.

  The women had gone into the next room.

  ‘Sit down,’ Professor Ball ordered Mr. Munn, and moved toward the hall, slowly.

  Mr. Munn let himself down, almost warily, into his chair.

  He heard the voices in the hall, Professor Ball saying: ‘Good evening. What can I do for you?’ and another voice: ‘We’ve come for Doctor MacDonald. Where is he?’

  He heard Professor Ball’s voice answer: ‘Come in, gentlemen, but I can’t oblige you. He is not here.’

  ‘That won’t do any good,’ the other voice answered. ‘We had word. He’s here.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Professor Ball’s voice repeated.

  By an effort of will, painfully, Mr. Munn conquered his impulse to rise from the chair.