Another day and there were new rumors, queerer still. Bob was located and interviewed. “He was down there, in that shanty of Tobe Eldridge’s, paintin’ those picture things of his just as if nothin’ had happened.” At least a dozen Harniss citizens had dropped in to ask questions. They were given little satisfaction. Griffin told them only the barest details. He furnished the answer to the puzzle concerning his whereabouts between the hours of eleven and one-thirty by saying that he had spent them in that very studio. He happened to remember something he had left there; he was rather vague about this. Walking to the village he had noticed the Townsend equipage by the roadside. “Where?” “Oh, up by the corner.” He had found Covell lying stunned and bleeding, and had taken him home. Then he went back to the stable and drove his own horse to Denboro. “Why did you lift him into that carriage all by yourself?” asked one persistent visitor. “Should have thought you’d have run somewhere for help or somethin’.” Bob replied that he guessed he had not thought of it. The interviewers departed not entirely satisfied. “He ain’t told the whole story. Holdin’ somethin’ back, that young feller is,” was the consensus of opinion. One of the callers at that studio the second day after the accident was Foster Townsend himself. Bob was not surprised to see him there. He knew that Seymour Covell’s host would not be satisfied with hearsay particulars, but would, sooner or later, seek first-hand information and that he--Bob--must be ready to supply it. He had had time to consider his problem and to reach certain definite conclusions. When, on that fateful night, or morning, he had dragged Seymour Covell from beneath the horses’ hoofs, his first impulse was to run to the nearest house for help. But the nearest house, the only house in that immediate vicinity, was that belonging to Henry Campton. Covell had, but a little while before, come from that house. A dim light was burning even yet in one of its upper windows. If Covell were taken there, if people learned that it was opposite that house the span had been left standing--well, the whole story, or a story, exaggerated and maliciously twisted, would spread from one end of the town to the other. Bob knew Carrie Campton slightly, knew her to be something of a rattle-head and very much of a flirt, but to risk subjecting her name and reputation to the innuendoes and wicked sneers of the gossip of Harniss seemed to him too mean to consider, if there was another alternative.