ome around disturbin' folks at this hour. But when a body's
in trouble, Colonel Price, time seems long."

"It's the same with all of us," said he. "But Miss Price will be down
presently. I think I hear her now. Just step in, ma'am."

She looked deprecatingly at her dusty shoes, standing there in the
parlor door, her skirts gathered back from them.

"If I could wipe some of this dust off," said she.

"Never mind that; we are all made of it," the colonel said. "I'll have
the woman set you out some breakfast; afterward we'll talk about the
boy."

"I thank you kindly, Colonel Price, but I already et, long ago, what
little I had stomach for," said she.

"Then if you will excuse me for a moment, madam?" begged the colonel,
seeing her seated stiffly in an upholstered chair.

She half rose in acknowledgment of his bow, awkward and embarrassed.

"You're excusable, sir," said she.

The colonel dashed away down the hall. She was only a mountain woman,
certainly, but she was a lady by virtue of having been a gentleman's
wife. And she had caught him without a coat!

Mrs. Newbolt sat stiffly in the parlor in surroundings which were of the
first magnitude of grandeur to her, with corn pictures adorning the
walls along with some of the colonel's early transgressions in
landscapes, and the portraits of colonels in the family line who had
gone before. That was the kind of fixings Joe would like, thought she,
nodding her serious head; just the kind of things that Joe would enjoy
and understand, like a gentleman born to it.

"Well, he comes by it honest," said she aloud.

Colonel Price did not keep her waiting long. He came back in a black
coat that was quite as grand as Judge Little's, and almost as long. That
garment was the mark of fashion and gentility in that part of the
country in those days, a style that has outlived many of the hearty old
gentlemen who did it honor, and has descended even to this day with
their sons.

"My son's innocent of what they lay to him, Colonel Price," said Mrs.
Newbolt, with impressive dignity which lifted her immediately in the
colonel's regard.

Even an inferior woman could not associate with a superior man that long
without some of his gentility passing to her, thought he. Colonel Price
inclined his head gravely.

"Madam, Peter Newbolt's son never would commit a crime, much less the
crime of murder," he said, yet with more sincerity in his words,
perhaps, than lay in his heart.

"I