ittle. Catching Shade
Buckheath's eye fixed on her from outside the window, she beckoned him
in and asked him to tell her exactly how the trouble came about.
Buckheath gave her his own version of the matter, omitting, of course,
all mention of the bandanna full of ore which lay now carefully hidden
at the bottom of old Gideon Himes's trunk.

"And you say he fell down the steps?" asked Johnnie. "Who was with him?
Who saw it?"

"Nobody but me and Pap," Shade answered, trying to give the reply
unconcernedly.

"I--I seen it," whispered Mavity Bence, plucking at Johnnie's sleeve. "I
was in the fore room here--and I seen it all."

She spoke defiantly, but her terrified glance barely raised itself to
the menacing countenances of the two men on the other side of the
lounge, and fell at once. "I never heard nothin' they was sayin'," she
made haste to add. "But I seen Pros fall, and I run out and helped Pap
and Shade fetch him in."

Peculiar as was the attitude of all three, Johnnie felt a certain relief
in the implied assurance that there had been no quarrel, that her uncle
had not been struck or knocked down the steps.

"Why, Pap," she said kindly, looking across at the old man's perturbed,
sweating face, "you surely ain't like these foolish folks round here in
Cottonville that think the hospital was started up to get dead bodies
for the student doctors to cut to pieces. You see how bad off Uncle Pros
is; you must know he's bound to be better taken care of there in that
fine building, and with all those folks that have learned their business
to take care of him, than here in this house with only me. Besides, I
couldn't even stay at home from the mill to nurse him. Somebody's got to
earn the money."

"I wouldn't charge you no board, Johnnie," fairly whined Himes. "I'm
willin' to nurse Pros myself, without he'p, night and day. You speak up
mighty fine for that thar hospital. What about Lura Dawson? Everybody
knows they shipped her body to Cincinnati and sold it. You ort to be
ashamed to put your poor old uncle in such a place."

Johnnie turned puzzled eyes from the rigid face on the lounge--Pros had
neither moved nor spoken since they lifted and laid him there--to the
old man at the window. That Pap Himes should be concerned, even
slightly, about the welfare of any living being save himself, struck her
as wildly improbable. Then, swiftly, she reproached herself for not
being readier to believe good of him. He and Uncle