Then I tells them about how I first happened to hear of David Armstrong, and all I had hearn from Martha. And how I had stayed at the Davises in Tennessee and got some more of the same story from George, the old nigger there. “But, Danny,” says the doctor, “why didn't you tell me all this?” I was jest going to say that not knowing he was that there David Armstrong I didn't think it any of his business, when Colonel Tom, he says to Doctor Kirby--I mean to David Armstrong: “Why should you be concerned as to her whereabouts? You ruined her life and then deserted her.” Doctor Kirby--I mean David Armstrong--stands there with the blood going up his face into his forehead slow and red. “Tom,” he says, “you and I seem to be working at cross purposes. Maybe it would help some if you would tell me just how badly you think I treated Lucy.” “You ruined her life, and then deserted her,” says Colonel Tom agin, looking at him hard. “I _didn't_ desert her,” said Doctor Kirby. “She got disgusted and left _me_. Left me without a chance to explain myself. As far as ruining her life is concerned, I suppose that when I married her--” “Married her!” cries out the colonel. And David Armstrong stares at him with his mouth open. “My God! Tom,” he says, “did you think--?” And they both come to another standstill. And then they talked some more and only got more mixed up than ever. Fur the doctor thinks she has left him, and Colonel Tom thinks he has left her. “Tom,” says the doctor, “suppose you let me tell my story, and you'll see why Lucy left me.” Him and Colonel Tom had been chums together when they went through Princeton, it seems--I picked that up from the talk and some of his story I learned afterward. He had come from Ohio in the beginning, and his dad had had considerable money. Which he had enjoyed spending of it, and when he was a young feller never liked to work at nothing else. It suited him. Colonel Tom, he was considerable like him in that way. So they was good pals when they was to that school together. They both quit about the same time. A couple of years after that, when they was both about twenty-five or six years old, they run acrost each other accidental in New York one autumn. The doctor, he was there figgering on going to work at something or other, but they was so many things to do he was finding it hard to make a choice. His father was dead by that time, and looking fur a job in New York, the way he had been doing it, was awful expensive, and he was running short of money. His father had let him spend so much whilst he was alive he was very disappointed to find out he couldn't keep on forever looking fur work that-a-way.