re David
Armstrong I didn't think it any of his business, when Colonel Tom, he
says to Doctor Kirby--I mean to David Armstrong:

"Why should you be concerned as to her whereabouts? You ruined her life
and then deserted her."

Doctor Kirby--I mean David Armstrong--stands there with the blood going
up his face into his forehead slow and red.

"Tom," he says, "you and I seem to be working at cross purposes. Maybe
it would help some if you would tell me just how badly you think I
treated Lucy."

"You ruined her life, and then deserted her," says Colonel Tom agin,
looking at him hard.

"I DIDN'T desert her," said Doctor Kirby. "She got disgusted and left
ME. Left me without a chance to explain myself. As far as ruining her
life is concerned, I suppose that when I married her--"

"Married her!" cries out the colonel. And David Armstrong stares at him
with his mouth open.

"My God! Tom," he says, "did you think--?"

And they both come to another standstill. And then they talked some more
and only got more mixed up than ever. Fur the doctor thinks she has left
him, and Colonel Tom thinks he has left her.

"Tom," says the doctor, "suppose you let me tell my story, and you'll
see why Lucy left me."

Him and Colonel Tom had been chums together when they went through
Princeton, it seems--I picked that up from the talk and some of his
story I learned afterward. He had come from Ohio in the beginning, and
his dad had had considerable money. Which he had enjoyed spending of it,
and when he was a young feller never liked to work at nothing else. It
suited him. Colonel Tom, he was considerable like him in that way. So
they was good pals when they was to that school together. They both quit
about the same time. A couple of years after that, when they was
both about twenty-five or six years old, they run acrost each other
accidental in New York one autumn.

The doctor, he was there figgering on going to work at something or
other, but they was so many things to do he was finding it hard to make
a choice. His father was dead by that time, and looking fur a job in
New York, the way he had been doing it, was awful expensive, and he was
running short of money. His father had let him spend so much whilst
he was alive he was very disappointed to find out he couldn't keep on
forever looking fur work that-a-way.

So Colonel Tom says why not come down home into Tennessee with him fur
a while, and they will both try and figger out w