his knowing it. Young and Tess were
hiding someone! At bed time he decided that the next day he would find
out who was the other man in Young's house. It might give him a hold on
his obstreperous brother-in-law and the hateful squatter girl.

CHAPTER XLIV

SANDY'S VISIT

The next day, Ebenezer Waldstricker met Lysander Letts, just back from
Auburn, loitering along Buffalo Street near the Lehigh Valley station.
The prison-pallor of the squatter's face and hands and the ill-fitting,
cheap prison clothes on his big body made him conspicuous among the men
on the street. Waldstricker pulled up his team.

"Sandy," he called, "come to the office when you're uptown. I want to
see you."

An hour or so later, the squatter slouched into Waldstricker's private
room.

The elder rose and greeted him.

"So you're out again?" The question was really a statement.

"Yes," assented Letts, sitting down on the edge of the chair, "an' I
wouldn't a been if I hadn't been let out on good behavior. I made up my
mind I wouldn't stay a minute longer'n I had to."

"I guess after this you won't be stealing dead bodies, will you?" asked
the rich man.

"Nope, you bet I won't! I've enough of Auburn. It ain't like the Ithaca
jail!... Heard anythin' of Tess Skinner?"

"Yes, she's got a boy over three years old."

Lysander nodded his head slowly, as if he'd received confirmation of a
conclusion previously formed.

"Thought likely," he muttered. "Where air she livin'? I met Jake Brewer
on the street an' he says she air left the shack."

"So she has, but not very far away.... Letts, I want you to do something
for me. Are--or I might put it--do you still want to make up to the
Skinner girl?"

Sandy's face grew dark with uncontrollable anger.

"I want to rip the skin offen her inch by inch," he snarled.

The other man gave a low, mirthless laugh. The picture of the girl he
disliked so intensely, writhing in the great hands of the brute opposite
him, appealed to the elder's sardonic humor.

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," he averred. "But she's got some one who
won't see her hurt."

Letts jumped up and stepped close to the desk where the other was
sitting. Here was a complication he hadn't anticipated. He moistened his
dry lips with a tobacco stained tongue and demanded,

"Who air he?... Air she married?"

"No, she's living in Graves' old place, the house I, now, own, with
Deforrest Young."

"Ye mean, your wife's brother,