"No, I know you ain't, Jim; you've always told more to your mother than most boys. But I didn't just know but this might be something you hadn't got ready to speak about." "What is it you want to know, mother?" "Jim, is that your _girl?_" Jim laughed a little, although his eyes were grave; he raise the fiddle to his shoulder. "Lord, no, mother. I wouldn't get a girl without asking you." "I didn't know but you might have seen her over to Ware when you've been there to parties, and not said anything." "I never saw her but that once, mother." Jim struck up "Kinloch of Kinloch," but he played softly, lest by any chance Madelon, aloft in her chamber, might hear. "She's handsome as a picture," said his mother. "Who is it that's in prison, Jim?" "A young man by the name of Gordon." "What for?" "They think he stabbed his cousin." "My sakes! Do you s'pose he did, Jim?" "I don't know, mother. I wasn't there." "I s'pose the young man that did it is this girl's beau, and that's why she's so crazy to get him out." Jim played the merry measure softly, and made no reply. His mother stood before him quivering with curiosity, which she restrained lest it defeat its own ends. She had learned early that too impetuous feminine questioning is apt to strike a dead-wall in the masculine mind. "I didn't quite understand what she meant about a knife," she ventured, with an eager glance at her son. He played a little louder, as if he did not hear. "I s'pose she come here, walked all that way from Ware Centre, this dreadful night, 'cause she thought you could help to get her young man out of prison." Jim nodded as he fiddled. "But I can't see how your seein' her brother give her a knife could do any good. Of course that sweet, pretty girl didn't do it herself. But you didn't see her brother give her the knife, Jim?" "Didn't you hear me say I didn't?" replied Jim, with sudden force. "Don't let's talk any more about it, mother. It's a dreadful piece of work, anyway. I don't half know what it means myself. That poor girl is 'most crazy because that fellow is in prison. That's why she came on this wild-goose chase after me. You can't tell anything by what she says." "Wasn't he a nice kind of a fellow before this happened, Jim?" "No, he was a scamp," said Jim Otis, angrily. He struck into the "Fisher's Hornpipe" with fury, regardless of the girl up-stairs. "Land sakes, Jim, don't fiddle quite so loud as that--I'm dreadful afraid she'll hear," said his mother. "I shouldn't thought a girl that looks as sweet as she does would ever have taken up with a scamp."