She went back to her chair and book, shaping certain questions she would put to this brother. But it was not until after the evening meal that she could again talk with him, for the ardent novice found occupation about the stable and corrals the rest of the afternoon, and even sat for a time with the men in the evening, listening avidly to their small talk of the range, watchful to share in it. When he dared ask a question knowingly, or venture a swift comment couched in the vernacular, he thrilled with a joy not less poignant because it must be dissembled. But conscience pricked him at length to leave those fascinating adventurers in the bunkhouse and to condescend for an interval to mere brotherhood. He found his sister alone in the "front" room, ensconced on the bearskin rug before a snapping and fragrant fire of cedar wood. He drew up the wooden rocker and remarked that the fire smelled like a thousand burning leadpencils. He would have gone on to talk of his great experience, but the woman wisely forestalled him. "Clarence," she began directly, "I've been thinking over that old affair of Randall Teevan and his wife, Kitty Lowndes, you know. Do you happen to recall the name of the man--the man Kitty went away with?" "Lord, no! That was before I'd learned to remember anything. If you want to rake that affair up, ask Randy Teevan himself. I'll wager he hasn't forgotten the chap's name. But why desecrate the grave of so antique a scandal? Ask me about something later. I remember he had a cook once, when I was six----" "Because--because I was thinking, just thinking. Are you certain you remember nothing about it, not even the man's name, nor what sort of man he was, nor what he did, nor anything?" "I only know what you must know. Randall Teevan's wife decided that the Bishop had made two into the wrong one. I doubt if I ever heard the chap's name. I seem to remember that they took Alden with them--he was a baby of four or five, I believe, and that Randy scurried about and got him back after no end of fuss. I've heard dad speak of that." "Did Kitty and that man ever marry?" "No; you can be sure Teevan saw to that. He took precious good care not to divorce her. They manage those things more politely nowadays; everything formal, six months' lease of a furnished house in Sioux Falls, with the chap living at a hotel and dropping in for tea every day at five; and felicitations from the late husband when the decree is granted in the morning and the new knot tied in the afternoon--another slipknot like the first, so that the merest twitch at a loose end will----" "Please don't! And did you never know anything more about them, where they lived or how they ended?" "Never a thing, Sis. It's all so old, everybody's forgotten it, except Teevan. Of course he'd not forget the only woman who ever really put a lance through his shirt-of-mail vanity." "You forget Kitty's mother. She remembers."