Miss Amelia did not e home until almost dark. They heard the rattle of her automobile while she was still a long distance away, then the slam of the door and a bumping noise as though she were hauling something up the front steps of her premises. The sun had already set, and in the air there was the blue smoky glow of early winter evenings. Miss Amelia came down the back steps slowly, and the group in her yard waited very quietly. Few people in this world could stand up to Miss Amelia, and against Marvin Macy she had this special and bitter hate. Everyone waited to see her burst into a terrible holler, snatch up some dangerous object, and chase him altogether out of town. At first she did not see Marvin Macy, and her face had the relieved and dreamy expression that was natural to her when she reached home after having gone some distance away.
Miss Amelia must have seen Marvin Mad Cousin Lymon at the same instant. She looked from oo the other, but it was not the wastrel from the peiary on whom she finally fixed her gaze of sick amazement. She, and everyone else, was looking at Cousin Lymon, and he was a sight to see.
The hunchback stood at the end of the pit, his pale face lighted by the soft glow from the sm oak fire. Cousin Lymon had a very peculiar aplishment, which he used whenever he wished to ingratiate himself with someone. He would stand very still, and with just a little tration, he could wiggle his large pale ears with marvelous quiess and ease. This trick he always used when he wao get something special out of Miss Amelia, and to her it was irresistible. Now as he stood there the hunchbacks ears were wiggling furiously on his head, but it was not Miss Amelia at whom he was looking this time. The hunchback was smiling at Marvin Macy with areaty that was o desperation. At first Marvin Macy paid no attention to him, and when he did finally gla the hunchback it was without any appreciation whatsoever.
"What ails this Brokeback?" he asked with a rough jerk of his thumb.
No one answered. And Cousin Lymon, seeing that his aplishment was getting him nowhere, added new efforts of persuasion. He fluttered his eyelids, so that they were like pale, trapped moths in his sockets. He scraped his feet around on the ground, waved his hands about, and finally began doing a little trotlike dance. In the last gloomy light of the winter afternoon he resembled the child of a shaunt.
Marvin Macy, alone of all the people in the yard, was unimpressed.
"Is the runt throwing a fit?" he asked, and when no one answered he stepped forward and gave Cousin Lymon a cuff on the side of his head. The hunchback staggered, then fell ba the ground. He sat where he had fallen, still looking up at Marvin Macy, and with great effort his ears managed one last forlorn little flap.
Now everyouro Miss Amelia to see what she would do. In all these years no one had so much as touched a hair of Cousin Lymons head, although many had had the itch to do so. If anyone even spoke crossly to the hunchback, Miss Amelia would cut off this rash mortals credit and find ways of making things go hard for him a long time afterward. So now if Miss Amelia had split open Marvin Macys head with the ax on the back poro one would have been surprised. But she did nothing of the kind.
There were times when Miss Amelia seemed to go into a sort of trance. And the cause of these trances was usually known and uood. For Miss Amelia was a fine docto