“What's yo' name, stranger, an' what's yo' business over hyeh?”      

       “Dear me, there you go! You can see I'm fishing, but why does everybody in these mountains want to know my name?”      

       “You heerd me!”      

       “Yes.” The fisherman turned again and saw the giant's rugged face stern and pale with open anger now, and he, too, grew suddenly serious.     

       “Suppose I don't tell you,” he said gravely. “What—”      

       “Git!” said the mountaineer, with a move of one huge hairy hand up the mountain. “An' git quick!”      

       The fisherman never moved and there was the click of a shell thrown into place in the Winchester and a guttural oath from the mountaineer's beard.     

       “Damn ye,” he said hoarsely, raising the rifle. “I'll give ye—”      

       “Don't, Dad!” shrieked a voice from the bushes. “I know his name, hit's Jack—” the rest of the name was unintelligible. The mountaineer dropped the butt of his gun to the ground and laughed.     

  

       “Oh, air YOU the engineer?”      

       The fisherman was angry now. He had not moved hand or foot and he said nothing, but his mouth was set hard and his bewildered blue eyes had a glint in them that the mountaineer did not at the moment see. He was leaning with one arm on the muzzle of his Winchester, his face had suddenly become suave and shrewd and now he laughed again:     

       “So you're Jack Hale, air ye?”      

       The fisherman spoke. “JOHN Hale, except to my friends.” He looked hard at the old man.     

       “Do you know that's a pretty dangerous joke of yours, my friend—I might have a gun myself sometimes. Did you think you could scare me?” The mountaineer stared in genuine surprise.     

       “Twusn't no joke,” he said shortly. “An' I don't waste time skeering folks. I reckon you don't know who I be?”      

       “I don't care who you are.” Again the mountaineer stared.     

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