en they find their front door
locked. They go round to the back of the house and pry up a kitchen
window, or something.' She pledged me to secrecy, but I guess you won't
let it go any farther.

"Anyway, this is what she done: It was a time for brutal measures, so
she'd had Abner wheel that trunk over to the blacksmith shop and take the
hinges off. Abner just loves to do any work he don't have to do, and he
had entered cordially into the spirit of this adventure. It used up his
whole day, for which he was drawing three dollars from me. He took off
one side of four pair of hinges, opened the trunk at the back far enough
to reach in for the keys, unlocked it and fastened the hinges back on
again.

"It was some job. These hinges was riveted on and didn't come loose easy.
The rear of that trunk must of been one sad mutilation. It probably won't
ever again be the trunk it once was. Abner had to hustle to get through
in one day. I wish I could get the old hound to work for me that way.
They'd just got the trunk back when I rode in that night. It was nervy,
all right! I asked her if she wasn't afraid he would see the many traces
of this rough work she had done.

"'Not a chance on earth!' says Lydia. 'I knew he would never look at any
place but the front. He has the mind of a true scientist. It wouldn't
occur to him in a million years that there is any other way but the
front way to get into a trunk. I painted over the rivets and the bruises
as well as I could, but I'm sure he will never look there. He may notice
it by accident in the years to come, but the poor chap will then have
other worries, I hope.'

"Such was the chit. I don't know. Mebbe woman has her place in the great
world after all. Anyway, she'll be a help to Oswald. Whatever he ain't
she is."

VII

CHANGE OF VENUS

Ma Pettengill and I rode labouring horses up a steep way between two
rocky hillsides that doubled the rays of the high sun back upon us and
smothered the little breeze that tried to follow us up from the flat
lands of the Arrowhead. We breathed the pointed smell of the sage and we
breathed the thick, hot dust that hung lazily about us; a dust like
powdered chocolate, that cloyed and choked.

As recreation it was blighting; and I said almost as much. Ma Pettengill
was deaf to it, her gray head in its broad-brimmed hat sternly bowed in
meditation as she wove to her horse's motion. Then I became aware that
she talked to another; one who w