We went right through the main street and out toward the edge of town, by the crick, where Miss Lucy's house was. And, if anything, all of us feeling nervouser yet. And saying nothing and not looking at each other. And Colonel Tom rolling cigarettes and fumbling fur matches and lighting them and slinging them away. Fur how does anybody know how women is going to take even the most ordinary little things? I knowed the way well enough, and where the house was, but as we went around the turn in the road I run acrost a surprised feeling. I come onto the place where our campfire had been them nights we was there. Looey had drug an old fence post onto the fire one night, and the post had only burned half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked, was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It hit me with a queer feeling--like it was only yesterday that fire had been lit there. And yet I knowed it had been a year and a half ago. Well, it has always been my luck to run into things without the right kind of a lie fixed up ahead of time. They was three or four purty good stories I had been trying over in my head to tell Martha when I seen her. Any one of them stories might of done all right; but I hadn't decided WHICH one to use. And, of course, I run plumb into Martha. She was standing by the gate, which was about twenty yards from the veranda. And all four lies popped into my head at oncet, and got so mixed up with one another there, I seen right off it was useless to try to tell anything that sounded straight. Besides, when you are in the fix I was in, what can you tell a girl anyhow? So I jest says to her: "Hullo!" Martha, she had been fussing around some flower bushes with a pair of shears and gloves on. She looks up when I says that, and she sizes us all up standing by the gate, and her eyes pops open, and so does her mouth, and she is so surprised to see me she drops her shears. And she looks scared, too. "Is Miss Buckner at home?" asts Colonel Tom, lifting his hat very polite. "Miss B-B-Buckner?" Martha stutters, very scared-like, and not taking her eyes off of me to answer him. "Miss Hampton, Martha," I says. "Y-y-y-es, s-sh-she is," says Martha. I wondered what was the matter with her. It is always my luck to get left all alone with my troubles. The doctor and the colonel, they walked right past us when she said yes, and up toward the house, and left her and me standing there. I could of went along and butted in, mebby. But I says to myself I will have the derned thing out here and now, and know the worst. And I was so interested in my trouble and Martha that I didn't even notice if Miss Lucy met 'em at the door, and if so, how she acted. When I next looked up they was all in the house. "Martha--" I begins. But she breaks in. "Danny," she says, looking like she is going to cry, "don't l-l-look at me l-l-like that. If you knew ALL you wouldn't blame me. You--" "Wouldn't blame you fur what?" I asts her.