ure we were right and they wrong."

She gave the impression of vibrating with impatience and cried out,
"That's pettifogging. Of course there are times when we are sure.
Suppose you saw a little child about to take hold of the red-hot end of
a poker?"

"A child is different," he opposed her. "All grown-ups are responsible
for all children. I suppose I'd keep him from taking hold of it. And yet
I'm not dead sure I'd be right. If I thought he was only just going to
touch it, to see if it really would burn him as people had told him, I
guess I'd let him."

"You always get around things," she said blamingly, "but there _are_
cases when you could be sure. Suppose you saw Aunt Hetty just about to
take poison, or Frank Warner getting Nelly Powers to run away with him?"

He was startled by this, and asked quickly with a change of tone,
"Whatever made you think of that? Are Frank and Nelly . . . ?"

"Oh, it just came into my head. No, I haven't heard anybody has said
anything, noticed anything. But I had a sort of notion that 'Gene
doesn't like Frank hanging around the house so much."

"Well . . ." commented her husband, with a lively accent of surprise. "I
hadn't dreamed of such a thing. And it throws a light on something I
happened to see this afternoon, on my way home. I came round the back
way, the ravine road below the Eagle Rocks. I wanted to see about some
popple we're thinking of buying from the Warners, on the shoulder beyond
the Rocks. It didn't occur to me, of course, that anybody else would be
up there, but just at the peak of the shoulder I saw 'Gene Powers, lying
down beside a big beech-tree. He didn't hear me, walking on the
pine-needles. And for a minute I stood there, and honestly didn't know
what to do."

"How do you mean . . . 'lying down'?" asked Marise, not visualizing the
scene. "As though he were sick?"

"No, not a bit that way. Not on his back, but on his face, looking over
the edge of the ridge. All strung up like a bow, his head down between
his shoulders and shot forwards like a cat stalking something. _I_ tell
you, he made me think of a hunter when he thinks he sees a deer. I
thought probably he had. I've seen a buck and some does up there lately.
Then he saw me and jumped up very quickly and came down past me. I was
going to say, just for the sake of saying something, 'Laying your plans
for next deer-week?' But as he went by and nodded, he looked at me with
such an odd expression that I thou