The colonel was leaning up agin the teacher's desk, smoking and looking at Doctor Kirby. Doctor Kirby turns around toward the colonel. "You have saved my life," he says, getting up out of his chair, like he had a notion to step over and thank him fur it, but was somehow not quite sure how that would be took. The colonel looks at him silent fur a second, and then he says, without smiling: "Do you flatter yourself it was because I think it worth anything?" The doctor don't answer, and then the colonel says: "Has it occurred to you that I may have saved it because I want it?" "WANT it?" "Do you know of any one who has a better right to TAKE it than I have? Perhaps I saved it because it BELONGS to me--do you suppose I want any one else to kill what I have the best right to kill?" "Tom," says Doctor Kirby, really puzzled, to judge from his actions, "I don't understand what makes you say you have the right to take my life." "Dave, where is my sister buried?" asts Colonel Tom. "Buried?" says Doctor Kirby. "My God, Tom, is she DEAD?" "I ask you," says Colonel Tom. "And I ask you," says Doctor Kirby. And they looked at each other, both wonderized, and trying to understand. And it busted on me all at oncet who them two men really was. I orter knowed it sooner. When the colonel was first called Colonel Tom Buckner it struck me I knowed the name, and knowed something about it. But things which was my own consarns was attracting my attention so hard I couldn't remember what it was I orter know about that name. Then I seen him and Doctor Kirby knowed each other when they got that first square look. That orter of put me on the track, that and a lot of other things that had happened before. But I didn't piece things together like I orter done. It wasn't until Colonel Tom Buckner called him "Dave" and ast him about his sister that I seen who Doctor Kirby must really be. HE WAS THAT THERE DAVID ARMSTRONG! And the brother of the girl he had run off with had jest saved his life. By the way he was talking, he had saved it simply because he thought he had the first call on what to do with it. "Where is she?" asts Colonel Tom. "I ask you," says Doctor Kirby--or David Armstrong--agin. Well, I thinks to myself, here is where Daniel puts one acrost the plate. And I breaks in: "You both got another guess coming," I says. "She ain't buried anywheres. She ain't even dead. She's living in a little town in Indiany called Athens--or she was about eighteen months ago." They both looks at me like they thinks I am crazy. "What do you know about it?" says Doctor Kirby. "Are you David Armstrong?" says I. "Yes," says he. "Well," I says, "you spent four or five days within a stone's throw of her a year ago last summer, and she knowed it was you and hid herself away from you."