rept up to the window and looked in. It was not Wilson who was
there. It was Mrs. Garth. She had the old man's trunk open, and was
rummaging among some papers at the bottom of it."

"Did you go in to her?"

"I was afeart of the woman, Ralph; but I did go in, dotherin' and
stammerin'."

"What did she say?"

"She was looking close at a paper as I came upon her. She started a
little, but when she saw who it was she bashed down the lid of the
trunk and brushed past me, with the paper in her hand. 'You can tell
him, if you like, that I have been here.' That was all she said, and
before I had turned about she had gone, she had. What was that paper,
Ralph; do you know?"

"Perhaps time will tell, perhaps not."

"There was something afoot atween those two; what was it?"

"Can't you guess? You discovered his name."

"Wilson Garth, that was it. That was the name I found on his papers.
Yes, I opened the trunk and looked at them when the woman had gone;
yes, I did that."

"You remember how she came to these parts? That was before my time of
remembrance, but not before yours, Sim."

"I think they said she'd wedded a waistrel on the Borders."

"Did they ever say the man was dead?"

"No, I can't mind that they ever did. I can't mind it. He had beaten
her and soured her into the witch that she is now, and then she had
run away frae him with her little one, Joe that now is. That was what
they said, as I mind it."

"Two and two are easily put together, Sim. Wilson Garth, not James
Wilson, was the man's name."

"And he was Mrs. Garth's husband and the father of Joe?"

"The same, I think."

Sim seemed to stagger under the shock of a discovery that had been
slow to dawn upon him.

"How did it come, Ralph, that you brought him here when you came home
from the wars? Everything seems, someways, to hang on that."

"Everything; perhaps even this last disaster of all." Ralph passed his
fingers through his hair, and then his palm across his brow. Sim
observed a change in his friend's manner.

"It was wrong of me to say that, it was," he said. "I don't know that
it's true, either. But tell me how it came about."

"It's a short story, old friend, and easily told, though it has never
been told till now. I had done the man some service at Carlisle."

"Saved his life, so they say."

"It was a good turn, truly, but I had done it--at least, the first
part of it--unawares. But that's _not_ a short story."

"Tell me, Ralph."