On his knees picking up loose shot, the man didn't answer, but his wife stuck her head out the door and proved she had a voice after all. 'We're as hospitable as anybody else, except to known burglars and thieving prentices.'

Arthur Stuart let out a low whistle. 'What you want to bet Davy Crockett came this way?' he said softly.

'I never stole a thing in my life,' said Alvin.

'What you got in that poke, then?' demanded the woman.

'I wish I could say it was the head of the last man who pointed a gun at me, but unfortunately I left it attached to his neck, so he could come here and tell lies about me.'

'So you're ashamed to show the golden plough you stole?'

'I'm a blacksmith, ma'am,' said Alvin, 'and I got my tools here. You're welcome to look, if you want.'

He turned to address the other folks who were gathering, out on their porches or into the street, a couple of them armed.

'I don't know what you folks heard tell,' said Alvin, setting down his poke, 'but you're welcome to look at my tools.' He drew open the mouth of the poke and let the sides drop so his hammer, tongs, bellows, and nails lay exposed in the street. Not a sign of a plough.

Everyone looked closely, as if taking inventory.

'Well, maybe you ain't the one we heared tell of,' said the woman.

'No, ma'am, I'm the exact one, if it was a certain trapper in a coonskin cap named Davy Crockett who was telling the tale.'

'So you confess to being that Prentice Smith who stole the plough? And a burglar?'

'No, ma'am, I just confess to being a fellow as got himself on the wrong side of a trapper who talks a man harm behind his back.' He gathered up his bag over the tools and drew the mouth closed. 'Now, if you-all want to turn me away, go ahead, but don't go thinking you turned away a thief, because it ain't so. You pointed a gun at me and turned me away without a bite to eat for me or this hungry boy, without so much as a trial or a scrap of evidence, just on the word of a traveller who was as much a stranger here as me.'