But it was not easy to encounter Dave in these days. Since he had acquired notoriety, as the only witness of the murder, he had been seized with an unprecedented diffidence, and kept himself out of public gaze. The boys about the village conjectured that he was "laying low for big game." Bob, however, had no objection to waiting for Sovine's coming. He liked this lurking for prey as a cat likes the watching at a mouse-hole. Besides, loafing of any sort suited Big Bob's genius. He could sit astride a barrel on the shady side of a grocery for hours with no sense of exhaustion. More than one day McCord had passed in this way, when at last Dave Sovine came in sight, walking rather hurriedly and circumspectly toward the center of the village. Bob was in the middle of a hunting yarn which he was lazily telling to another loafer on the next barrel as he whittled a bit of hickory stripped from one of the hoops in front of him. Without betraying any excitement, he astonished his companions by bringing the long-drawn story to an abrupt conclusion. Then dismounting from his barrel he sauntered across the street in such a way as to encounter Dave and to fall in with the direction in which the latter was going. "Hot day!" Bob said, as he intersected Dave's course at an acute angle. "Yes," answered the other. "How's the corn crap out your way?" "Dunno," said Dave. "Goin' to be in town long?" Bob persisted. To this Dave made no response. He only turned off abruptly at the street-corner and left Bob behind. "A feller might as well try to git sugar-water by tappin' a dead sycamore as to git anything out uv him," Bob said to himself, as he turned and took the road toward Hubbard Township. As he walks homeward over the level prairie, which west-wardly has no visible limit, Bob can only think of one way to persuade Sovine to talk, and that way is out of the reach of a man so impecunious as he. It is in vain that you thrust your great fists down into the pockets of your butternut trousers, Bob. You know before you grope in them that there is no money there. You have felt of them frequently to-day and found them empty; that is why you are going home thirsty. Money will not be persuaded to remain in those pockets. Nevertheless, all the way home Bob mechanically repeats the search and wonders how he will get money to carry out his plan. He might go to Lincoln, but he has an instinctive feeling that Lincoln is what he calls "high-toned," and that the lawyer might see an impropriety in his new plan. By the time he passes into his own cabin he knows that there is no other way but to get the money from Mrs. Grayson. No easy task, Bob reflects. Mrs. Grayson has never shown any readiness to trust Bob McCord's business skill.