circus had come, and his eyes a-bugging out. And
the doctor hearn them, too. Fur some reason or other he flushed up and
cut a look out of the corner of his eye at Colonel Tom.

We went right through the main street and out toward the edge of town,
by the crick, where Miss Lucy's house was. And, if anything, all of us
feeling nervouser yet. And saying nothing and not looking at each other.
And Colonel Tom rolling cigarettes and fumbling fur matches and lighting
them and slinging them away. Fur how does anybody know how women is
going to take even the most ordinary little things?

I knowed the way well enough, and where the house was, but as we went
around the turn in the road I run acrost a surprised feeling. I come
onto the place where our campfire had been them nights we was there.
Looey had drug an old fence post onto the fire one night, and the post
had only burned half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked,
was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It hit me with a queer
feeling--like it was only yesterday that fire had been lit there. And
yet I knowed it had been a year and a half ago.

Well, it has always been my luck to run into things without the right
kind of a lie fixed up ahead of time. They was three or four purty good
stories I had been trying over in my head to tell Martha when I seen
her. Any one of them stories might of done all right; but I hadn't
decided WHICH one to use. And, of course, I run plumb into Martha. She
was standing by the gate, which was about twenty yards from the veranda.
And all four lies popped into my head at oncet, and got so mixed up
with one another there, I seen right off it was useless to try to tell
anything that sounded straight. Besides, when you are in the fix I was
in, what can you tell a girl anyhow?

So I jest says to her:

"Hullo!"

Martha, she had been fussing around some flower bushes with a pair of
shears and gloves on. She looks up when I says that, and she sizes us
all up standing by the gate, and her eyes pops open, and so does her
mouth, and she is so surprised to see me she drops her shears.

And she looks scared, too.

"Is Miss Buckner at home?" asts Colonel Tom, lifting his hat very
polite.

"Miss B-B-Buckner?" Martha stutters, very scared-like, and not taking
her eyes off of me to answer him.

"Miss Hampton, Martha," I says.

"Y-y-y-es, s-sh-she is," says Martha. I wondered what was the matter
with her.

It is always my luck to g