"By letter. She was in Galesburg, Illinois, if you know where that is. She was living there alone. And she was almost destitute. I wrote her to come home. She would not. But she had to live. I got rid of some of our property in Tennessee, and took enough cash up there with me to fix her, in a decent sort of way, for the rest of her life, and put it in the bank. I was with her there for ten days; then I went back home to get Aunt Lucy Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her to return. But when I got back North with Aunt Lucy she had gone." "Gone?" "Yes, and when we returned without her to Tennessee there was a letter telling us not to try to find her. We thought--I thought--that she might have taken up with you once again." "But, my God! Tom," the doctor busts out, "you were with her ten days there in Galesburg! Didn't she tell you then--couldn't you tell from the way she acted--that she had married me?" "That's the odd thing, Dave," says the colonel, very slow and thoughtful. "That's what is so very strange about it all. I merely assumed by my attitude that you were not married, and she let me assume it without a protest." "But did you ask her?" "Ask her? No. Can't you see that there was no reason why I should ask her? I was sure. And being sure of it, naturally I didn't talk about it to her. You can understand that I wouldn't, can't you? In fact, I never mentioned you to her. She never mentioned you to me." "You must have mistaken her, Tom." "I don't think it's possible, Dave," said the colonel. "You can mistake words and explanations a good deal easier than you can mistake an atmosphere. No, Dave, I tell you that there's something odd about it--married or not, Lucy didn't BELIEVE herself married the last time I saw her." "But she MUST have known," says the doctor, as much to himself as to the colonel. "She MUST have known." Any one could of told by the way he said it that he wasn't lying. I could see that Colonel Tom believed in him, too. They was both sicking their intellects onto the job of figgering out how it was Lucy didn't know. Finally the doctor says very thoughtful: "Whatever became of Prentiss McMakin, Tom?" "Dead," says Colonel Tom, "quite a while ago." "H-m," says the doctor, still thinking hard. And then looks at Colonel Tom like they was an idea in his head. Which he don't speak her out. But Colonel Tom seems to understand. "Yes," he says, nodding his head. "I think you are on the right track now. Yes--I shouldn't wonder." Well, they puts this and that together, and they agrees that whatever happened to make things hard to explain must of happened on that day that Prentiss McMakin met the doctor in the bar-room, and didn't shoot him, as he had made his brags he would. Must of happened between the time that afternoon when Prentiss McMakin left the doctor and the time Colonel Tom went out to see his sister and found she had went. Must of happened somehow through Prent McMakin.