me to go with him.

"I showed him the door. I pretended to the last that I thought he was
lying to me. But I did not think so. I believed him. He had done it
all very cleverly. You can understand how I might--in view of what had
happened?"

I wanted to see Miss Lucy--how she looked when she said different
things, so I could make up my mind whether she was forgiving the doctor
or not. Not that I had much doubt but what they would get their personal
troubles fixed up in the end. The iron grating in the floor was held
down by four good-sized screws, one at each corner. They wasn't no
filling at all betwixt it and the iron grating that was in the ceiling
of the room below. The space was hollow. I got an idea and took out my
jack-knife.

"What are you going to do?" whispers Martha.

"S-sh-sh," I says, "shut up, and you'll see."

One of the screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. The
second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearly
always do on a screw. When it snapped Colonel Tom he says:

"What's that?" He was powerful quick of hearing, Colonel Tom was. I laid
low till they went on talking agin. Then Martha slides out on tiptoe and
comes back in three seconds with one of these here little screw-drivers
they use around sewing-machines and the little oil can that goes with
it. I oils them screws and has them out in a holy minute, and lifts the
grating from the floor careful and lays it careful on the rug.

By doing all of which I could get my head and shoulders down into that
there hole. And by twisting my neck a good deal, see a little ways to
each side into the room, instead of jest underneath the grating. The
doctor I couldn't see yet, and only a little of Colonel Tom, but Miss
Lucy quite plain.

"You mean thing," Martha whispers, "you are blocking it up so I can't
hear."

"Keep still," I whispers, pulling my head out of the hole so the sound
wouldn't float downward into the room below. "You are jest like all
other women--you got too much curiosity."

"How about yourself?" says she.

"Who was it thought of taking the grating off?" I whispers back to her.
Which settles her temporary, but she says if I don't give her a chancet
at it purty soon she will tickle my ribs.

When I listens agin they are burying that there Prent McMakin. But
without any flowers.

Miss Lucy, she was half setting on, half leaning against, the arm of a
chair. Which her head was jest a bit bowed down s