he became uncomfortably aware of the resemblance
between his own proposed withdrawal and Old Crow's; but he stuck to it
doggedly. It was all playing into Dick's hands and Amelia's, assuming he
could predicate her mind; but he was resolved they shouldn't have it all
their own way. He would give them every last straw of evidence, and it
should do them no good in the end. There was a bravado about it. If
Dick, in his affectionate virtue and Amelia in her energy of well-doing,
wanted to challenge him to the proof, he'd give them a pretty tussle for
it.

"What I want to know is," said Dick, "what he thought he was going off
there for? Didn't anybody know?"

"They may have," said Raven. "I didn't know."

"And he lived his life out there, till he died?"

"Yes. And died in a very gentlemanly fashion, of pneumonia, and was
found in a dignified position on his bed, hands folded, and everything
in a great state of order, as if he'd known he was going and arranged
things to give as little trouble as he could."

"What did he do up there all by himself? Read? Write?"

"He read a good deal, I believe. We found him reading when we went up."

"What sort of books?"

"Oh, hang it, Dick," said Raven, beginning to fidget under examination,
"you're district-attorneying it a trifle too much to interest me. I'm
getting bored, son. This isn't a third degree."

But Dick was not to be curbed or reasoned with.

"I think," he said, "if you don't mind, we'd better talk it out. You see
I do really need to know about him, and you're the only one that can
tell me. Mother's is chiefly hearsay."

"Fire away," said Raven easily, accepting the situation. He leaned back
in his chair and began making patterns on the block of paper before him
with a silver dagger at his hand. "What is it you want to know?"

"Everything. How the neighbors regarded him, what they said."

"The neighbors didn't regard him at all, in your sense. Don't you know
the way country folks have of passing over the most eccentric things as
if they're all in the day's work? They gossip like thunder, and, if they
can whip up a scandal, they're made. But they never seem so awfully
shocked. Perhaps it's because they're used to the plain facts of life,
death, birth, madness, suicide. Maybe there's a sort of _gaucherie_
about it. There are things you're shocked about that you wouldn't dare
discuss at Cambridge or the Club. You'd be afraid it wasn't good form.
Maybe you would thou