Mrs. Otis, anxiously.

"Of course she can't, up in the front chamber, with all the doors
shut. Wouldn't have touched it if she could."

"Well, I don't s'pose she can. Jim--"

Jim twanged a string. "What is it, mother?"

"I don't want to have you think I'm interferin', Jim. I know you're
grown-up now, and I know there's things a young man might not want to
tell his mother till he gets ready, but I do kind of want to know one
thing, Jim."

Jim tightened the G string. He bent his face low over his violin. "I
don't know as I've ever kept much back from you, mother," he said,
soberly.

"No, I know you ain't, Jim; you've always told more to your mother
than most boys. But I didn't just know but this might be something
you hadn't got ready to speak about."

"What is it you want to know, mother?"

"Jim, is that your _girl?_"

Jim laughed a little, although his eyes were grave; he raise the
fiddle to his shoulder. "Lord, no, mother. I wouldn't get a girl
without asking you."

"I didn't know but you might have seen her over to Ware when you've
been there to parties, and not said anything."

"I never saw her but that once, mother." Jim struck up "Kinloch of
Kinloch," but he played softly, lest by any chance Madelon, aloft in
her chamber, might hear.

"She's handsome as a picture," said his mother. "Who is it that's in
prison, Jim?"

"A young man by the name of Gordon."

"What for?"

"They think he stabbed his cousin."

"My sakes! Do you s'pose he did, Jim?"

"I don't know, mother. I wasn't there."

"I s'pose the young man that did it is this girl's beau, and that's
why she's so crazy to get him out."

Jim played the merry measure softly, and made no reply.

His mother stood before him quivering with curiosity, which she
restrained lest it defeat its own ends. She had learned early that
too impetuous feminine questioning is apt to strike a dead-wall in
the masculine mind.

"I didn't quite understand what she meant about a knife," she
ventured, with an eager glance at her son. He played a little louder,
as if he did not hear.

"I s'pose she come here, walked all that way from Ware Centre, this
dreadful night, 'cause she thought you could help to get her young
man out of prison."

Jim nodded as he fiddled.

"But I can't see how your seein' her brother give her a knife could
do any good. Of course that sweet, pretty girl didn't do it herself.
But you didn't see her brother give her the knife, Jim?"