I LOVED HIM SO. I AM HAPPY. I KNOW
IT IS WRONG, BUT I LOVE HIM SO YOU MUST FORGIVE ME.'"

"But couldn't you tell from THAT we were married?" cries out the doctor.

"She didn't mention it," says Colonel Tom.

"She supposed that her own family had enough faith in her to take it for
granted," says the doctor, very scornful, his face getting red.

"But wait, Dave," says Colonel Tom, quiet and cool. "Don't bluster with
me. There are still a lot of things to be explained. And that marriage
is one of them.

"To go back a bit. You say you got to the house somewhere around ten
o'clock that evening and found Lucy gone. Do you remember the day of the
month?"

"It was November 14, 1888."

"Exactly," says Colonel Tom. "I got to Chicago at six o'clock of that
very day. And I went at once to the address in Lucy's letter. I got
there between seven and eight o'clock. She was gone. My thought was that
you must have got wind of my coming and persuaded her to leave with you
in order to avoid me--although I didn't see how you could know when I
would get there, either, when I thought it over."

"And you have never seen her since," says Armstrong, pondering.

"I HAVE seen her since," says Colonel Tom, "and that is one thing that
makes me say your story needs further explanation."

"But where--when--did you see her?" asts the doctor, mighty excited.

"I am coming to that. I went back home again. And in July of the next
year I heard from her."

"Heard from her?"

"By letter. She was in Galesburg, Illinois, if you know where that is.
She was living there alone. And she was almost destitute. I wrote her to
come home. She would not. But she had to live. I got rid of some of our
property in Tennessee, and took enough cash up there with me to fix her,
in a decent sort of way, for the rest of her life, and put it in the
bank. I was with her there for ten days; then I went back home to get
Aunt Lucy Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her to return.
But when I got back North with Aunt Lucy she had gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes, and when we returned without her to Tennessee there was a letter
telling us not to try to find her. We thought--I thought--that she might
have taken up with you once again."

"But, my God! Tom," the doctor busts out, "you were with her ten days
there in Galesburg! Didn't she tell you then--couldn't you tell from the
way she acted--that she had married me?"

"That's the odd thing, Dave," says the colonel