ising within me to run him
down."

Miss Lois went again to the fair, her mission bubbling within her. At
eight in the morning she started; at nine in the evening she returned.
With skirt and shawl bedraggled, and bonnet awry, she came to Anne's
room, closed the door, and demanded tragically that the broom-switch
should be taken from the shelf and applied to her own thin shoulders. "I
deserve it," she said.

"For what?" said Anne, smiling.

Miss Lois returned no answer until she had removed her bonnet and
brought forward a chair, seated herself upon it, severely erect, with
folded arms, and placed her feet on the round of another. "I went to
that fair," she began, in a concentrated tone, "and I followed that
medicine man; wherever he stopped his hand-cart and tried to sell, _I_
was among his audience. I heard all his stories over and over again;
every time he produced his three certificates, _I_ read them. I watched
his hands, too, and made up my mind that they would do, though I did not
catch him in _open_ left-handedness. I now tried 'cold.' 'Have you any
pills for a cold in the head?' I asked. But all he said was 'yes,' and
he brought out a bottle. Then I tried him with a cold on the lungs; but
it was just the same. 'What are your testimonials for colds?' I
remarked, as though I had not quite made up my mind; and he thereupon
told two stories, but they were incoherent, and never once mentioned the
word I was waiting to hear. 'Haven't you ever had a cold yourself?' I
said, getting mad. 'Can't you speak?' And then, looking frightened, he
said he often had colds, and that he took those medicines, and that they
always cured him. And then hurriedly, and without waiting for the two
bottles which I held in my hand tightly, he began to move on with his
cart. But he had said 'gold,' Ruth--he had actually said 'gold!' And,
with the stings of a guilty, murderous conscience torturing him, he was
going away without the thirty-seven and a half cents each which those
two bottles cost! It was enough for me. I tracked him from that
moment--at a distance, of course, and in roundabout ways, so that he
would not suspect. I think during the day I must have walked, owing to
doublings and never stopping, twenty miles. When at last the fair was
over, and he started away, I started too. He went by the main road, and
I by a lane, and _such_ work as I had to keep him in sight, and yet not
let him see me! I almost lost him several times, but