Justice of the Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the doorway of his office. He was smoking his pipe. The Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee rose blue-gray in the afternoon sky. A speckled hen walked down the main street, making foolish sounds. Up the road came the sound of creaking wheels. Then a slow cloud of dust appeared. A cart pulled by a bull stopped at the Justice’s door. Ransie Bilbro and his wife climbed out. The Justice put his feet back in his shoes. He moved to let them enter. «We-all,» said the woman in a thin voice, «want a divorce.» She looked at her husband Ransie to see if he agreed. «A divorce,» repeated Ransie with a sad shake of his head. «We can’t get along together no-how. It is lonesome enough to live in the mountains when a man and a woman care for each other. But when she spits like a wildcat, a man has no call to live with her.» The Justice of the Peace opened his book of laws. He wiped his eyeglasses. «The law,» he said, «is silent on the matter of divorce as far as this Court is concerned. But if a Justice of the Peace can marry two people, it is clear that he can separate them. This office will give a decree of divorce.»