ng's lamps were
lighted, the wild notes of his cowboy song rang from the hillside.
Farmers going to the village of a Saturday afternoon stopped at his
fence to engage him in talk, but he answered their questions as he went
on with his work. One day they heard him say to his hired man: "Go to
the house, Mitchell, and rest a while. You are worn out." A man whose
table was light, whose shipments of veal and poultry to town were heavy,
and who had been requested to put a better quality of water into his
milk, declared that he had lived too long and had too much experience
of the world to be fooled by a man from the West. He had committed some
crime--murder, no doubt--and Steve Hardy was censured for hauling him
over from the station. This surmise reached the ears of Mrs. Stuvic. She
waited till she saw the wise man driving past her house, and she stopped
him in the road.

"I'm glad you know all about my man over there, Hawkins."

"Why, I don't know anything about him."

"Oh, yes, you said he'd committed murder."

"No, I said most likely; but I didn't want it repeated, for, of course,
I don't know."

"Yes, you bet! And there's a good many things you don't want repeated.
You don't want it repeated that you put old Lewson's brats up to turning
him out of the house."

"Look here, madam, I didn't do anything of the sort. I simply said I
didn't see how they could live with him; and I didn't, either."

"Well, it's all right. The old man's got a better home than he ever had;
and you needn't worry yourself about my man over yonder. He couldn't
sell as much milk from five cows as you can do, and I don't believe you
can keep it up unless we have rain pretty soon, but he knows how to
attend to his own business, and that's somethin' you've never been able
to learn."

"Madam, if you'll step from in front of my horses I'll drive on."

"Yes, and mighty glad of the opportunity. You stir trouble, and are the
first one to hitch up and drive out of it. Now go on, and don't you let
me hear of any more murder stories."

Mrs. Blakemore, mother of the red boy, would not presume to say that
there was a stain on Milford's character; but he was undoubtedly
peculiar, with an air which bespoke a constant effort to hide something.
She knew, however, that there was good blood somewhere in his family.
She believed in blood. Her husband had failed in business, and she could
afford to despise trade. One Sunday, with her vacant-eyed husband and