as they--was they
something you wanted to see me about?"

CHAPTER X

The perplexed frown still furrowed Young Denny's forehead. He felt
that the fire had wrought a most remarkably swift cure of all that he
had feared, but the anxiety faded from his eyes. White head perked
forward, balanced a little on one side, birdlike, Old Jerry was
waiting for him to pick up the thread which had been broken so long.
And now it was the big-shouldered boy who faltered in his words,
uncertain just how to begin.

"I--I don't know just how to ask you," he started heavily. "I'm--I am
going away. I'm figuring on being gone quite a while, I think. First,
just after I had decided to go, some time last night, I made up my
mind to ask you to take care of the stock till I came back. I thought
maybe it wouldn't be too hard for you--with you coming by at night,
anyhow. There's just the one cow and the team, and the hens to feed.
And then I--I got to thinkin' that maybe, too, you'd be able to do
something else for me, if I sort of explained how things were.
There--there wasn't anyone else I could think of who'd be likely to
want to do me a favor."

He paused and licked his lips. And Old Jerry, too, furtively touched
his with the tip of his tongue. He was waiting breathlessly, but he
managed to nod his head a little, encouragingly, as he leaned closer.

"And that was what I was really waiting for," the slow voice went on
ponderously. "I saw this morning--anybody could have seen--what the
Judge meant them all to believe along the street when we drove
through. Somehow things have changed in the last twelve hours. I sort
of look at some things differently than I did, and so it was funny,
just funny to watch him, and I'm not so blind that I don't know what
his story will be tonight down at the Tavern. Not that I care what
they say, either. But there is some one who couldn't help believin'
it--couldn't believe anything else--after what happened last night."
He stopped, groping for words to finish. "And so I--I waited for you
to come," he went on lamely. "I took you outside and showed you how it
really happened, so that--so that you could tell _her_--the truth."

He nodded over his shoulder--nodded once out across the valley in the
direction of John Anderson's small drab cottage huddled in the shadow
under the hill. And now, once he had fairly begun, all the diffidence,
all the self-consciousness went from his voice. It was only big and
lo