"Have you any idea what 'Stumpage John' is goin' to do with the other one--the left-hand one?" he inquired, blandly. "Favor each other considerably, don't they? It told the story to me the first time I saw them together, after the right-hand one got there to my place. You can't hardly blame John for not takin' the left-hand one out with him, same as my girl sort of expected he would, same as his own girl did, too, I reckon." "Did he say anything to--" stammered Wade, and hesitated. "Nothin' to me," returned the magnate of Castonia, briskly. "Didn't have to. Knowed I knew. Day he left he tramped up and down the river-bank for more'n two hours, and then come to me with his face about the color of the Hullin' Machine froth and asked me to call the girl Kate into the back office of my store. I wasn't tryin' to listen or overhear, you understand, but I heard him stutter somethin' about takin' her out of the woods and puttin' her in school, and she braced back and put her hands on her hips and broke in and told him to go to hell." "What?" shouted Wade, in utter astonishment. "Oh, not in them words," corrected Ide. "But that's what it come to so far as meanin' went. And then she sort of spit at him, and walked out and back to my house." He clapped the reins smartly on the flank of the lagging horse, as though this sort of conversation wasted time, and added: "She's still at my house, and the girl says she's goin' to stay there--so I guess that settles it. Now let's get down to some business that amounts to somethin'! What are you goin' to say to Pulaski Britt?" But if Dwight Wade knew, he did not say. He sat bowed forward, hands between his knees, the letter between his palms, his jaw muscles ridged under the tan of his cheeks, and so the long ride ended in silence. When they were once in the Jerusalem cutting it was not necessary to search long for the Honorable Pulaski Britt, ex-State senator. They heard him bellowing hoarsely, and a moment later were looking down on him from the top of a ramdown. A pair of horses were floundering in the deep snow, one of them "cast" and tangled in the harness. The teamster stood at one side holding the reins helplessly. The snow was spotted with blood.