“So _that’s_ what you’ve been up to, you blamed old idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch. “Sneaking away and leaving everybody to wonder what had become of you. You ought to be cow-hided, Oliver Baxter. All the trouble and anxiety and worry you’ve caused me and your son and everybody else! All the money your son spent looking for you—to say nothing of what I’ve spent myself lately. Why, you old—” “Keep your shirt on, Horace,” advised Oliver blandly. “Don’t get excited. I just had to do it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would have lost my mind long before Oliver was thirty if I had sat around waiting for a year and more to see if he was really going to be hung. Besides, it’s none of your business anyhow. You say Oliver spent a lot of money trying to find me?” He put the question eagerly, wistfully. “And so did I,” snapped Mr. Gooch. “I’m not saying Oliver spent his own money. He probably—” “I don’t care whose money he spent,” cried Mr. Baxter joyously. “I’ll pay back all that you spent, so don’t you worry, you derned old skinflint. Every nickel of it.” “You will?” cried Mr. Gooch. “Is that a promise?” “Certainly. And my word is as good as my bond,” said Mr. Baxter proudly. “I’ve always said you were an absolutely honest man, Oliver,” said Mr. Gooch ingratiatingly. “Never knew you to go back on your word. If you say you’ll pay, I know you will.” “Figure it up and let me know,” said Mr. Baxter. “I guess my business is still prospering. I had a kind of notion Oliver October would step in and take hold of it in my place after I went away, so—But never mind about that. Yes, sir, I finally got the queen to confess that _everything_ she said that night was false. She wanted two hundred, but I wouldn’t give it. Said she was ruining herself by confessing, and all that. Oliver ain’t going to be hung any more than you or I. All spite work, she says. Got mad at all of us. He’s not even going to be a general in the army, or a great and successful business man, or enter the halls of state, or—” “What’s that?” demanded Mr. Gooch quickly, hopefully. “—or look exactly like me,” concluded Mr. Baxter. “She’s going to make an affidavit to it soon as we get to Rumley to-morrow.” Mr. Gooch started, casting an anxious look toward the kitchen door. “Say, you—you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got her with you,” he rasped. “If that’s so, I want to tell you right now, Ollie Baxter, I won’t have you bringing any strange women into my house. My house is a respectable—” “She’s out at the camp,” interrupted Mr. Baxter. “We’ve camped just south of town. I’ve been sleeping with her father for nearly a month—on rainy nights, I mean, when we had to get into the caravan. His name is Wattles. Eighty years old and still the best horsetrader in the tribe.” Mr. Gooch groaned.