Mothers seized their children, fathers caught up guns and axes. The
cross-roads merchant slammed his door and locked it. Oxen, catching the
alarm, bellowed in the fields.
Starbuck went out into the road to meet the men. "Say," he said, in
answer to their shout, "if you air lookin' for a mad dog I kin let you
have one cheap. He's round thar."
The dog was dragged away and the community returned to the allegiance
which it owed to quietude and laziness; the shiftless lout loitered
along the road, and the old woman, on the gray mare, followed by the
fuzzy mule colt, carried down to the "commercial emporium," "a settin'
o' goose aigs" to be swopped for a handful of coffee and a lump of brown
sugar.
"Ma'm," said Starbuck to Mrs. Mayfield, as he went back into the house,
"you see that we don't live so fur outen the world atter all. Of co'se
thar air places that have got mo' l'arnin' than we have, but we kin
skeer up a mad dog an' git rid o' him as quick as the best of 'em. An' I
reckon by this time you find that our affairs ain't so uneventful as you
put it.
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