, very slow and
thoughtful. "That's what is so very strange about it all. I merely
assumed by my attitude that you were not married, and she let me assume
it without a protest."

"But did you ask her?"

"Ask her? No. Can't you see that there was no reason why I should ask
her? I was sure. And being sure of it, naturally I didn't talk about it
to her. You can understand that I wouldn't, can't you? In fact, I never
mentioned you to her. She never mentioned you to me."

"You must have mistaken her, Tom."

"I don't think it's possible, Dave," said the colonel. "You can mistake
words and explanations a good deal easier than you can mistake an
atmosphere. No, Dave, I tell you that there's something odd about
it--married or not, Lucy didn't BELIEVE herself married the last time I
saw her."

"But she MUST have known," says the doctor, as much to himself as to the
colonel. "She MUST have known." Any one could of told by the way he said
it that he wasn't lying. I could see that Colonel Tom believed in him,
too. They was both sicking their intellects onto the job of figgering
out how it was Lucy didn't know. Finally the doctor says very
thoughtful:

"Whatever became of Prentiss McMakin, Tom?"

"Dead," says Colonel Tom, "quite a while ago."

"H-m," says the doctor, still thinking hard. And then looks at Colonel
Tom like they was an idea in his head. Which he don't speak her out. But
Colonel Tom seems to understand.

"Yes," he says, nodding his head. "I think you are on the right track
now. Yes--I shouldn't wonder."

Well, they puts this and that together, and they agrees that whatever
happened to make things hard to explain must of happened on that day
that Prentiss McMakin met the doctor in the bar-room, and didn't shoot
him, as he had made his brags he would. Must of happened between the
time that afternoon when Prentiss McMakin left the doctor and the time
Colonel Tom went out to see his sister and found she had went. Must of
happened somehow through Prent McMakin.

We goes home with Colonel Tom that night. And the next day all three of
us is on our way to Athens, Indiany, where I had seen Miss Lucy at.

CHAPTER XXIII

Fur my part, as the train kept getting further and further north, my
feelings kept getting more and more mixed. It come to me that I might be
steering straight fur a bunch of trouble. The feeling that sadness and
melancholy and seriousness was laying ahead of me kept me from really
enjo