"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?" She nodded. "Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each." "What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything." Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away in the first place. "Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a bloody murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?" THE DESPOILER Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house.