"Oh, sometimes as close as twenty or thirty feet. I remember one that dropped in the road about fifty feet ahead of my car, and before I could stop we ran plunk into the hole it made and upset. I suppose the Windom estate must be a pretty big one, isn't it, Mr. Vick?" "Taking everything into consideration, it amounts to nearly a million dollars. David Windom had quite a bit of property up in the city, aside from his farm, and he owned a big ranch out in Texas. The grain elevator in Windomville belonged to him,--still belongs to Alix Crown,--and there's a three mile railroad connecting with the main line over at Smith's Siding. Every foot of it is on his land. He built the railroad about twenty year ago, and the elevator, too,--out of spite, they say, for the men that run the elevator at Hawkins a little further up the road. Hawkins is the place where his daughter and Edward Crown got off the train the night of the murder." "And this young girl owns all of it,--farms, ranch, railroad and everything?" "Every cent's worth of it is her'n. There ain't a sign of a mortgage on any of it, either. It's as clear as a blank sheet of writin' paper." "When was it you were gassed, Mr. Thane?" inquired young Caleb. "Oh, that was when I was in the air service,--only a few weeks before the armistice." "You left your wings at home, too, I suppose?" "Yes. Mother likes to look at the only wings I'll probably ever have,--now or hereafter." "How does it come, Court, that you went into the British air corpse, 'stead of in the U. S. A.?" inquired old Caleb. "I joined the Royal Flying Corps, Mr. Brown, because the Americans wouldn't have me," replied Thane tersely. "I tried to get in, but they wouldn't pass me. Said I had a weak heart and a whole lot of rubbish like that. It's no wonder the American Air Service was punk. I went over to Toronto and they took me like a shot in the Royal British. They weren't so blamed finicky and old womanish. All they asked for in an applicant was any kind of a heart at all so long as it was with the cause. I don't suppose I ought to say it, but the American Air Service was a joke." "I hope you ain't turning British in your feelings, Court," remarked Amos Vick. "It's purty difficult to be both, you know,--English and Yankee." "I'm American through and through, Mr. Vick, even though I did serve under the British flag till I was gassed and invalided out." "Affects the lungs, don't it?" inquired old Caleb. "I don't like to talk about it, Mr. Brown. I'm trying to forget what hell was like. I was in hospital for four months. It took a lot more nerve to draw a breath then than it did to fly over the German lines with the Boches popping away from all sides. I didn't mind the wounds I sustained,--but the gas! Gee, it was horrible." "Your ma said in her letter to me that you'd had pneumonia twice since you got back," said Mrs. Vick. "Was that due to the gas?"