"'Essie frowed all 'e 'ackburries at 'e bad tow, an' 'e bad tows walked all over our pitty torn 'talks, so 'ey don't 'tan' up no more," he sobbed incoherently. Jessie looked at me with dilating eyes. We were by this time entering the house, where I was not surprised to find Mrs. Horton again awaiting us, for I had already observed the Horton equipage in the front yard. "Leslie!" Jessie was exclaiming, as we crossed the threshold. "Don't tell me that the cattle have been in our fields; it isn't possible!" "I guess it is," I said recklessly, unreasonably resenting our neighbor's placid face. "If you find it hard to believe, just go and look for yourself. There isn't a stalk of grain left standing," and I proceeded to give the details of my late adventure and experience. Jessie seemed like one dazed. She sank into a chair, holding Ralph, who was willing, for once, to be held tightly in her arms, and spoke never a word. "What I want to know," cried Mrs. Horton, her face fiery with indignation, "is, whose cattle were they? It's a low shameful, mean, trick; I don't care who did it! Oh, to think of all you've had to suffer, and of all that those fields of grain stood for to you, and then to think--I don't feel as if I could hear it!" she broke off, abruptly, her voice choking. I, avoiding her eyes, looked out of the window through which I saw, indeed, only the trampled fields, invisible to any but the mind's eye from that window. "I hope you can collect damages," Mrs. Horton broke out again; "and I guess you can if you can prove the ownership of the cattle. Did you notice the brand?" Feigning not to have heard the question, I still gazed silently out of the window, but Mrs. Horton was not to be put off so easily; she repeated the inquiry, her voice suddenly grown sharp with anxiety. "Did you notice the brand, Leslie?" "Yes." "Well?" She would not be put off, and, for a wicked moment, my heart was hot against all that bore her husband's name. "The brand was, 'R, half-circle, A,'" I said, and bolted out of the house to hide myself and my boiling indignation in the hayloft, but, as I went, I heard Mrs. Horton sobbing out an explanation to Jessie: "Jake started out early this morning, long before sun-up, it was, to drive the cattle from the upper range to the north pasture--he said. I told him I was afraid that he couldn't handle such a big bunch alone--there's nigh three thousand of them, if there's a dozen--but he thought that he could, and they must have got away from him after all!" Jessie made no comment, but lying at full length in the seclusion of the hayloft, I thought of the relative positions of the upper range, where Mr. Horton's cattle usually grazed, and the north pasture, and knew that, in order to reach our fields, the herd must have "strayed" at least five miles out of their proper course.