round
here--"

"Why don't you go and take some out of Steve Brown's rockery? Help
yourself, as God says."

"Why, that's just what we did do. We were passing there, and we each
took one--without particularly thinking. They are lying behind Colonel
Chase's big gate. We got them up there, but found they were rather
heavy. Could we get you to haul them back for us?"

"I bet you could, Mrs. Norton. The next time I pass there with the
wagon I 'll put them on. I don't suppose those stones are in any
particular hurry, are they?"

"Well," said Mrs. Norton, taking thought, "I have been thinking that
perhaps it would be just as well to get them back before he comes home.
He is out at the Thompson ranch tending to those sheep again, you know."

"Did you hear whether any one went with him?"

"Well, no--er--yes. That is, I don't really know whether there is or
not. I heard there was somebody out there."

Her answer, or the manner of it, struck Jonas as peculiar.

"Extra herder or two?" he suggested.

"One of the boys who was out at the ranch told somebody in town that
there was somebody out there. The regular herder was up at the
county-seat and had n't got back."

Mrs. Norton, now that she had boggled, by surprise, into the
acknowledgment that she knew anything whatever about the matter, felt
herself in a problematical position. She did not know whether his
question had been accidental or not; it sounded as if he knew; possibly
he had put it as a feeler to discover whether she knew. In which case
the subject became rather difficult; she did not know whether to
dissemble, nor how much to dissemble, nor how to do it.

Jonas, his curiosity aroused, persevered with more inquiries. Mrs.
Norton, after answering with a few vague references to Tuck Reedy's
report, suddenly made a bald evasion of the subject; she went back
without ceremony to the subject of rocks. Jonas had a new feeling that
there was something peculiar about the matter.

"And so I was thinking," continued Mrs. Norton, "that we had better
return them pretty soon. It was really an improper thing for us to
do--though we did not particularly think of it at the time. If he came
home and found the rockery gone he might not like it."

"Steve is rather peculiar, some ways," remarked Jonas.

"Is he? In what way?"

This remark of his had seemed to bear upon the hidden subject. She had
hope of receiving moral enlightenment from the masculine stand