d quiet that you kind of knowed
before you seen her how she orter look.

"Prentiss McMakin came to me that day," she was saying, "with an
appeal--I hardly know how to tell you." She broke off.

"Go ahead, Lucy," says Colonel Tom's voice.

"He was insulting," she said. "He had been drinking. He wanted me
to--to--he appealed to me to run off with him.

"I was furious--NATURALLY." Her voice changed as she said it enough so
you could feel how furious Miss Lucy could get. She was like her brother
Tom in some ways.

"I ordered him out of the house. His answer to that was an offer to
marry me. You can imagine that I was surprised as well as angry--I was
perplexed.

"'But I AM married!' I cried. The idea that any of my own people, or any
one whom I had known at home, would think I wasn't married was too much
for me to take in all at once.

"'You THINK you are,' said Prentiss McMakin, with a smile.

"In spite of myself my breath stopped. It was as if a chilly hand had
taken hold of my heart. I mean, physically, I felt like that.

"'I AM married,' I repeated, simply.

"I suppose that McMakin had got the story of our wedding from YOU." She
stopped a minute. The doctor's voice answered:

"I suppose so," like he was a very tired man.

"Anyhow," she went on, "he knew that we went first to Clarksville. He
said:

"'You think you are married, Lucy, but you are not.'

"I wish you to understand that Prentiss McMakin did it all very, very
well. That is my excuse. He acted well. There was something about
him--I scarcely know how to put it. It sounds odd, but the truth is that
Prentiss McMakin was always a more convincing sort of a person when he
had been drinking a little than when he was sober. He lacked warmth--he
lacked temperament. I suppose just the right amount put it into him. It
put the devil into him, too, I reckon.

"He told me that you and he, Tom, had been to Clarksville, and had made
investigations, and that the wedding was a fraud. And he told it with a
wealth of convincing detail. In the midst of it he broke off to ask to
see my wedding certificate. As he talked, he laughed at it, and tore
it up, saying that the thing was not worth the paper it was on, and he
threw the pieces of paper into the grate. I listened, and I let him do
it--not that the paper itself mattered particularly. But the very fact
that I let him tear it showed me, myself, that I was believing him.

"He ended with an impassioned appeal to