Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/47

 killed his benefactor seemed beyond credence—impossible.

"But he confessed to it himself," protested, in a puzzled, self-argumentative tone, one of the group gathered in the blacksmith's shop.

Joe Malloch, the smith, drew a glowing piece of iron from the forge and laid it viciously upon the anvil.

"S'posin' he did," he said gruffly; "I don't believe it for all that—nor none of you don't neither. There's something behind it, you mark my words. He's got some reason for sayin' it was him. Why, dang it, what's the use of talkin'! Don't you know Varge? Ain't he stuck to the old Doc all these years just out of gratitude, when he could have been anything about he liked if he'd only been willin' to leave the old couple an' strike out for himself? He's got a head on him, Varge has. Look what he's done with what he's had to do with. He's studied, he has; and I'll bet if he had college papers, or whatever it is, to let him practise, he'd show he was as good as the old Doctor himself. D'ye think a man that's done as he has an' acted the way he has would do a thing like this?"

"It don't look likely, that's a fact," agreed the first speaker.

"No; it don't—an' it ain't!" grunted Malloch. "But, anyway, there's one consolation—a man's just sayin' he did a thing ain't enough to fit a noose around his neck in these days."

"No," admitted another of the group; "but it goes a long way toward it, just the same."

The smith's arm came down with a sudden swing and a shower of sparks flew from the hammer blow.