Not
much. No, sir, her scholars hev put the flesh on to her pore bones;
and I give them the credit. They air tryin' to pay for what their
schoolmarm's put into their heads and hearts."

"Miss Buchanan has taught us a thing or two," I suggested.

"Yes," Mrs. Spafford replied solemnly, "she hev."

II

THE DUMBLES

Looking back, I am quite sure that John Jacob Dumble's chief claim to
the confidence of our community--a confidence invariably abused--was
the fact that the rascal's family were such "nice folks," "so well-
raised," so clean, so respectable, such constant and punctual "church-
members." After the Presbyterian Church was built in Paradise, no more
edifying spectacle could be seen than the arrival on Sunday mornings
of the Dumble family in their roomy spring wagon. The old man--he was
not more than fifty-five--had two pretty daughters and a handsome son.
Mrs. Dumble, a comely woman, always wore grey clothes and grey thread
gloves. She had a pale, too impassive face, and her dark hair, tightly
drawn back from her brows, had curious white streaks in it. Ajax said
a thousand times that he should not sleep soundly until he had
determined whether or not Mrs. Dumble was a party to her husband's
misdemeanours. My brother's imagination, as I have said before, runs
riot at times. He was of opinion that the wearing of grey indicated a
character originally white, but discoloured by her husband's dirty
little tricks. Certainly Mrs. Dumble was a woman of silence,
secretive, with lips tightly compressed, as if--as Ajax remarked--she
feared that some of John Jacob's peccadilloes might escape from them.

The father was inordinately proud of his son, Quincey, who in many
respects took after the mother. He, too, was quiet, self-possessed,
and somewhat pale. He worked for us and other cattlemen, not for his
father, and after the lad left school Ajax fell to speculating about
him, as he speculated about the mother.

"Is Quincey on to the old man's games?" he would ask.

It must be recorded that John Jacob was very careful to keep within
the limits of the law, but he ploughed close to the line, where the
soil, as we all know, is richest and, comparatively speaking, virgin.
But no man in the county was louder than he in denouncing such crimes
as horse-stealing or cattle-lifting, crimes in those days
disgracefully common. He might ear-mark a wandering piglet, for
instance, or clap his iron upon an unbranded yearling;