and me between us are goin' to prove it!"

Toomey's answer was a jeering laugh of defiance, but when he came in and
slammed the door behind him, she saw that his face was a sickly yellow
and his shaking hand spilled the tobacco which he tried to pour upon a
cigarette paper.

She waited a moment for an explanation but, since it was not
forthcoming, asked anxiously:

"What's the matter, Jap?"

He did not hear her.

She persisted:

"Who was it?"

"Teeters and Lingle."

"The deputy sheriff?"

He nodded.

She came a little further into the room with her flour-covered hands.

"What did they want, Jap, that's so upset you?"

"I'm not upset!" He glared at her. His trembling hand could not touch
the match to the cigarette paper.

"It's only right that you should tell me," she said firmly.

His eyes wavered.

"It's about the cook stove; Teeters wants to foreclose the mortgage."

She regarded him fixedly, turned, and started for the kitchen. She knew
that he was lying.

CHAPTER XI

KATE KEEPS HER PROMISE

One of the things which Mrs. Abram Pantin's worst enemy would have had
to admit in her favor was that, strictly speaking, she was not a gossip,
though this virtue was due as much to policy as to principle. It was her
custom, however, to retain in her memory such morsels of common
knowledge news as she accumulated during the day with which to entertain
Mr. Pantin at evening dinner, for she observed that if his thoughts
could be diverted from business it aided his digestion and he slept
better, so she strove always to have some bright topic to introduce at
the table.

Having said a silent grace, Mr. Pantin inquired mechanically:

"Will you have a chop, Prissy?" Since there were only two he did not use
the plural.

Mrs. Pantin looked across the fern centerpiece and made a mouth as she
regarded the chop doubtfully.

"I'm afraid I am eating too much meat lately."

Impaled on a tine of the fork, the chop was of a thinness to have
enabled one to read through it without much difficulty.

Mr. Pantin placed the chop on his own plate with some little alacrity.

As his wife took one of the two dainty rolls concealed in a fringed
napkin on the handsome silver bread tray, she endeavored to recall what
it was in particular that she had saved to tell him. Oh, yes!

"What do you think I heard to-day, Abram?"

Abram was figuring interest and murmured absently:

"I have no idea."

"They say," in her