if it was all in the family. We had
hustled our clothes on and was sneakin' down the front stairs as easy as
we could when we hears from Homer.

"I heard you dressing," says he, "so I got up, too. I haven't been
asleep yet."

"Then come along with us," says Leonidas. "It'll do you good. We're only
going up the street to find out when it was that the cars struck Hen
Dorsett."

Homer didn't savvy, but he didn't care. Mainly he wanted comp'ny. He
whispered to us to go easy, suspectin' that if we woke up Mother Bickell
she'd want to feed him some more clam fritters. By the time we'd
unlocked the front door though, she was after us, but all she wanted was
to make Homer wrap a shawl around his head to keep out the night air.

"And don't you dare take it off until you get back," says she. Homer was
glad to get away so easy and said he wouldn't. But he was a sight,
lookin' like a Turk with a sore throat.

The old man had routed Ase Horner out by the time we got there, and
they was havin' it hot and heavy. Ase said it wasn't either November nor
March when he went up after Hen Dorsett, but the middle of October. He
knew because he'd just begun shingling his kitchen and the line storm
came along before he got it finished. More'n that, it was in '84, for
that was the year he ran for sheriff.

"See here, gentlemen," says Leonidas, "isn't it possible to find some
official record of this sad tragedy? You'll excuse us, being strangers,
for takin' a hand, but there don't seem to be much show of our getting
any sleep until this thing is settled. Besides, I'd like to know myself.
Now let's go to the records."

"I'm ready," says Ase. "If this thick-headed old idiot here don't think
I can remember back a few years, why, I'm willing to stay up all night
to show him. Let's go to the County Clerk's and make him open up."

So we started, all five of us, just as the town clock struck twelve. We
hadn't gone more'n a block, though, before we met a whiskered old relic
stumpin' along with a stick in his hand. He was the police force, it
seems. Course, _he_ wanted to know what was up, and when he found out he
was ready to make affidavit that Hen had been killed some time in August
of '81.

"Wa'n't I one of the pall bearers?" says he. "And hadn't I just drawn my
back pension and paid off the mortgage on my place, eh? No use routin'
out the Clerk to ask such a fool question; and anyways, he ain't to
home, come to think of it."

"If you'll