"I have heard nothing new," Mary answered, wonderingly. "You say you haven't? Well, everybody else has, here in town, I'll bet a horse. Tobe, she hain't heard. You tell her. He can do it to the queen's taste." Mrs. Keith laughed in a chuckling way. "You can't fool me with that prim look of yours, Miss Mary," the wounded man said, smiling wanly from his pillow, as Mary bent over him. "You know all about it. I'm not such a fool as to think that two big things would just happen together like you being here yesterday and that other piling in so quick afterwards." "What do you mean by 'that other'?" Mary asked, in groping surprise. "Listen, Ma, listen at her!" Tobe laughed. "You know women better 'n I do. Ain't she just making out?" "She looks to me like she's really puzzled," Mrs. Keith answered. "The truth is, Miss Mary, the money for the Atlanta trip was sent last night, an' we don't know who it come from; but Tobe declares you are at the bottom of it." "I believe it, and nothing won't shake me from it," Tobe insisted, still smiling confidently. "You say--you say that you got the money!" Mary fairly gasped in surprise. "Not only that, but a cool hundred over the amount," Tobe went on. "You'd as well get off your high perch, Miss Mary Rowland. You see, I've got evidence." "Evidence! I don't understand." Mary was truly bewildered. "Yes. I had no sooner mentioned it to Mrs. Bartlett this morning than she told about how you was riding from place to place to borrow the money. I can put two and two together easy enough. You simply got the money and are trying to keep from being known in it, that's all." "I give you my word, Tobe, I know nothing about it," Mary answered, her head hanging in embarrassment. "I confess I _did_ try to get the money, and--and I intended to try again to-day. Of course, I'm glad it has come." "I believe she is in earnest, Tobe," Mrs. Keith said, her gaunt hands clutching the foot of the bedstead. "Well, it is awfully strange, Miss Mary. It happened like this. I was up with Tobe to give him his fever mixture about two o'clock this morning, when down the street, alongside Mrs. Bartlett's picket fence, I saw two men coming. It looked like one was trying to persuade the other to do something that he didn't exactly want to tackle, an' my first thought was that they were niggers trying to rob some hen-roost. But while I was watching, sorter scrouched down on the door-sill, so as not to be seen, the two men come on to our gate and halted. Then in the starlight, that was pretty bright, I saw they was white men. I was still, an' so was they for a minute; then I heard one of them say, sorter peevish-like: 'Go on. Knock at the door, an' when somebody comes out hand it to 'em and say what I told you to say. That ain't hard to remember. Nobody won't hurt you.'"