I am ashamed to be obliged to record that Mr. Horton's declaration of a change in his feelings toward us, and his promises of better conduct toward us in the future were accompanied in my secret thought by such damaging reflections, but such was the case. The dictionary was under my arm and glancing down at it I said: "I would like to know, if you don't mind, Mr. Horton, how this book--and you--came to be under the ruins of that shack?" There was a big black and blue bruise on the back of Mr. Horton's right hand, the hand that some weeks previously had been injured by an oak splinter, as he told his wife, on the night that I had fired at a man fleeing up the hillside. Looking attentively at the bruise, and not at all at me, Mr. Horton replied: "Well; it was an easier thing to undertake than it is to tell; that's so. 'Bout as easy to tell though as it was to go through with. That's a wide-awake dog of yours, Miss Leslie, lives up to his name, too. He was living right up to it last night when I sneaked up to your window after watching you and Miss Jessie go out to the corral, and making sure that the boy was asleep. I opened the window, got the book that, I made sure, was the Bible that I had seen put on the window ledge that morning, and started back toward my horse. But I'd forgot one thing, I'd forgot about the dog. He didn't forget himself, though; he came round the corner after me and I had to leg it like scat. I had studied some about him earlier in the day; enough so that I had thrown a piece of poisoned meat near the upper trail. Not seeing anything of him in the evening I never thought of him again until I felt him a-holt of my coat-tail, for he caught up with me in a minute. I do'no how it would 'a' come out between us, but jest then while I was pulling up the hill and he was pulling back for all he was worth, we come to the meat, stumbled over it, in fact. The dog let go my coat--he's young, I reckon--" the victim interpolated, impartially; "an old dog wouldn't 'a' give up his game for such a thing as that--and stopped to sniff the meat. That give me time to reach my horse, but he come tearing after me like a whole pack o' bloodhounds. After I was fairly in the saddle, though, I didn't hear anything more of the dog. I 'lowed that he'd given up and gone back, or else that he'd swallered the meat and the poison had got in its work. I rode down along the ravine, feeling good. As I said, I'd planned it out beforehand. I knew jest what I was going to do with the Bi--dictionary. I didn't 'low to plumb destroy it. I 'lowed that when it was too late for it to be of any use to you--that is, after I'd entered the claim--I'd see to it that it accidentally come to light again. I didn't want to plumb destroy it," he repeated apologetically. I made no comment, and Mr. Horton, plucking a pine branch, began divesting it of its needles with fingers that shook a little in spite of himself as he proceeded: