"I guess I don't understand you," he said. "Are you Miss Pringle?" "That's who I am," she declared with emphasis. "And I heard all about you from Mr. Bronson. You were comin' to stay at my house last night and you didn't come. Were you told to come to me?" "Not exactly. I was advised to try at your house for lodging--" "Who by?" she flashed at him. "By the stationmaster." "That dumbhead! I might have known Jase Oakley would ball it all up. When Mr. Bronson 'phoned to me that he could not get over in the storm to meet you at the depot, I turned right around and 'phoned Jason to tell you that I would be on the lookout for you. Didn't he tell you that, Mr. Strong?" "Not in just that way," replied Hiram. "Well, for the land's sake, where did you stop? When you didn't come along at the proper time after the train got in last evening I began calling folks on the line. I called everybody that had a 'phone, and none of 'em had seen you. It was so rough a night--" Hiram saw at once that the terrible Miss Pringle was, after all, a kindly soul. It could not be for the mere possession of a "male creature," sight unseen, that she had taken all this trouble to locate him, a stranger in Pringleton. "You were most kind, Miss Pringle," he said quickly. "I am sorry to have caused you any disturbance of mind." "But where did you stay?" insisted the woman, eyeing Hiram with two very sharp brown eyes. It was evident that very little of importance went on in Miss Delia Pringle's neighborhood that she did not see. She was kindly of disposition as well as shrewd, Mr. Yancey Battick's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Hiram was not at all afraid of her when he looked into her plump and rosy face. "I tell you," he said, smiling covertly, for he suspected from what the stationmaster had said how the majority of the neighbors looked upon Yancey Battick, "a heavy shower caught me and I made for the nearest house." "And whose was that, for the land's sake?" was the instant demand. "Mr. Battick's," Hiram said demurely. "Yancey Battick?" almost shrieked Miss Pringle. "Why, he's crazy!" "I shouldn't wonder if he is a little," admitted Hiram. "But I am sure he is harmless." "I don't know about that," she demurred. "He's altogether too quick to use a gun. A poor tramp came past here last summer--he never would have stopped, I guess, only he was out of breath completely--and Battick had blown his coat-tails off with a charge of rock-salt just because the hobo had gone into the yard of the old house and around to the well. That's the coldest water anywhere in Pringleton; but nobody ever gets a drink of it but Yancey Battick now." "I suppose he's paid for it, Miss Pringle?" said Hiram quietly.