hay on the wagon.

"How is Si feelin' now?" he enquired.

"Oh, I guess he's all right. He had a nasty fall and might have been
killed."

"H'm, that old cuss won't die that way. It would be too easy a death.
If he doesn't bust when he gits in one of them mad fits of his, he'll
be skinned alive by somebody one of these days. I'd like to be around
an' hear him squeal. It would make up fer a great deal of impudence
I've stood, to say nuthin' of his confounded pride, as well as the
whole darn family. But I kin put up with Si better than I kin with
Ben; he's the limit."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Well, Si knows a little about farmin', but Ben knows no more about it
than I do about harnessin' up a baby with pins, strings, ribbons, an'
all its other gear. Ben thinks he knows, an' that's where he makes a
fool of himself. He gives orders which no one in his right mind would
think of obeyin', an' then he gits as mad as blazes when ye don't do as
he says."

"Is Ben the only son?" Douglas asked.

"Thank goodness, yes. One is bad enough, dear knows, but if there were
more, ugh!"

"What does Ben do?"

"Do? Well, I wouldn't like to tell ye."

"Does he work at anything, I mean?"

"Not a tap. He depends upon his dad fer a livin'. See what he did
this mornin'. Instead of stayin' home an' lookin' after the hayin', he
went to the city. That's what he's always doin'; runnin' away when
there's work to be done."

"He was home yesterday, was he not?"

"Y'bet yer life he was, especially in the evenin'. He's ginerally
around about that time."

"Why?"

"Oh, he's struck on the old professor's daughter. Her father doesn't
like the Stubbles crowd, an' so Ben sneaks around there after he's in
bed."

"Isn't it strange that the professor's daughter would do such a thing?"

"Now ye've got me," and the teamster gave a savage thrust at a forkful
of hay Douglas had just handed up. "The whole thing is a mystery.
Nell's as fine a girl as ever wore shoe-leather, an' why she meets that
feller in the evenin' beats me."

Douglas made no reply to these words, but went on quietly with his
work. So it was Ben Stubbles who met Nell Strong every night by the
old tree! Surely she must know something about his life if what the
teamster had just told him were true. He could not understand it. She
did not seem like a woman who would have anything to do with such a
worthless character. And yet she was meeting him regular