n' ready to hug the stove he heard Miss Banks an' one of
the men comin' back. He shinned up the ladder into the garret just in
time. In they come an' the feller lit a lamp. 'Rast could hear 'em
talkin'. She said good-bye to the schoolhouse forever, an' the feller
kissed her a couple of times. 'Rast pretty nigh swore out loud at that.
Then she said she'd leave a note in her desk fer the trustees, resignin'
her job, er whatever she called it. He heard her read the note to the
man, an' it said somethin' about goin' away unexpected to git married.
'Rast says ef Anderson had looked in the desk he'd have found the note.

"Then she packed up some books an' her an' the feller went out. 'Rast
was paralysed. He heerd the sleigh-bells jingle an' then he come to. He
started down the ladder so quick that he missed his hold and went
kerslam clear to the bottom. Doggone ef he didn't light on his head,
too. He don't know how long he laid there, but finally he was
resurrected enough to crawl over by the stove. His arm was broke an' he
was bleedin' like a stuck hog. Miss Banks had left her handkerchief on
the desk, an' he says he tried to bind up his head with it, but it was
too infernal small. Somehow he got outside an' wandered around half
crazy fer a long time, finally pullin' up at my house, derned nigh froze
to death an' so weak he couldn't walk no more. He'd lost his hat an' his
ear muffs an' his way all at the same time. If Anderson had let me talk
this mornin' he'd 'a' knowed there wasn't no murder. It was just a
match."

Hours passed before Anderson was himself again and able to comprehend
the details of the story which involved the disappearance of his ward.
It slowly filtered through his mind as he sat stark-eyed and numb before
the kitchen fire that this was the means her mysterious people had taken
to remove her from his custody. The twenty years had expired, and they
had come to claim their own. There was gloom in the home of Anderson
Crow--gloom so dense that death would have seemed bright in comparison.
Mrs. Crow was prostrated, Anderson in a state of mental and physical
collapse, the children hysterical.

All Tinkletown stood close and ministered dumbly to the misery of the
bereaved ones, but made no effort to follow or frustrate the abductors.
The town seemed as helpless as the marshal, not willingly or wittingly,
but because it had so long known him as leader that no one possessed the
temerity to step into his place,