"Therefore you are still sure I am the woman you married in Louisiana. Well, the man who was driving the hack the day of my arrival, saw you in the fields, and he made a remark I have never forgotten. He said--she mimicked Mr. Goodlett as well as she could--'Well, dang my hide! ef thar ain't old Silas Tomlin out huntin'! Ef he shoots an' misses he'll pull all his ha'r out.' 'Why?' I asked. 'Bekaze he can't afford to waste a load of powder an' shot.'" Silas tried to smile. He knew that the point of Mr. Goodlett's joke was lost on the lady. Silas tried to smile, but the effort was too much for him, and he frowned instead. "You did all you could to humour my mistake," he declared. "I certainly did," said Mrs. Claiborne, very seriously. "I had good reason to believe that your treatment of my sister was not what it should have been." "Good Lord! she wouldn't let me treat her well. Why, we hadn't been married three months before she took a dislike to me, and she never got over it. The truth is, she couldn't bear the sight of me. I did what any other young man would have done. I packed up my things and came back home. I told Dorrington about it when I came back, and he said the trouble was a form of hysterics that finally develops into insanity." "Yes, that was what happened to my poor sister," said Mrs. Claiborne, "and I never knew the facts until a few months ago. Our aunt, you know, always contended that you were the cause of it all. But Judge Vardeman, quite by accident, met the physician who had charge of the case, and I have a letter from him which clearly explains the whole matter." Silas Tomlin sat silent for a long time, his gaze fixed on the floor. "Well, well! here I have been going on for years under the impression that I was partly responsible for that poor girl's troubles; and it has been a nightmare riding me every minute that I had time to think." He stood up, stretched his arms above his head, and drew a long breath. "I thank you for laying my ghost, and I'll bid you good-night." CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE _Mr. Sanders Receives a Message_