?" she asked quietly, but with flaming cheeks.

He smote his fist on the table. "It don't matter who says it. You keep
away from him. Let Aunt Becky nurse him. You haven't any call to wait on
him, anyhow. If he's got to be nursed by one of the family, I'll do it."

He tried to keep his word, and as a result of it the wounded man had to
endure his sulky presence occasionally. Keller was man of the world
enough to be amused at his attitude, and yet was interested enough in
the lad's opinion of him to keep always an even mood of cheerful
friendliness. There was a quantity of winsome camaraderie about him that
won its way with Phil in spite of himself. Moreover, all the boy in him
responded to the nester's gameness, the praises of which he heard on all
sides.

"I see you have quite made up your mind I'm a skunk," the wounded man
told him amiably.

"You robbed the bank at Noches and shot up three men that hadn't hurt
you any," the boy retorted defiantly.

"Not unless Jim Yeager is a liar."

"Oh, Jim! No use going into that. He's your friend. I don't know why,
but he is."

"And you're Brill Healy's. That's why you won't tell that he was
carrying your sister's knife the day I saw you and him first."

The boy flashed toward the bed startled eyes. Keller was looking at him
very steadily.

"Who says he had Phyl's knife?"

"Hadn't he?"

"What difference does that make, anyhow? I hear you're telling that you
found the knife beside the dead cow. You ain't got any proof, have you?"
challenged young Sanderson angrily.

"No proof," admitted the other.

"Well, then." Phil chewed on it for a moment before he broke out again:
"I reckon you cayn't talk away the facts, Mr. Keller. We caught you in
the act--caught you good. By your own story, you're the man we came on.
What's the use of you trying to lay it on me and Brill?"

"Am I trying to lay it on you?"

"Looks like. On Brill, anyhow. There's nothing doing. Folks in this neck
of the woods is for him and against you. Might as well _sabe_ that right
now," the lad blurted.

"I _sabe_ that some of them are," the other laughed, but not with quite
his usual debonair gayety. For he did not at all like the way things
looked.

But though Phil had undertaken to do all the nursing that needed to be
done by the family, he was too much of an outdoors dweller to confine
himself for long to the four walls of a room. Besides, he was often
called away by the work of looking after t