"Well, she's the woman that run off with Bob Gwynne. There ain't no doubt about it. Everybody knowed it. I wuz there at the time, workin' fer Ed Peters. He left his wife an' a little boy. His wife was a daughter of ole Squire Blythe,--damn his heart! He had me hoss-whipped in public fer--well, fer some triflin' thing I done. Seems to me Mrs. Carter had a little baby girl. Maybe not. I ain't much of a hand fer noticin' babies." "You are sure,--absolutely positive about all this?" whispered Lapelle intensely. "You bet yer boots I am." "She ran off with a married man?" "She did. A feller by the name o' Gwynne, as I said afore,--Bob Gwynne. An' I want to tell you, he got out o' that town jest in time or I'd have slit his gizzard fer him. He had me arrested fer stealin' a saddle an' bridle. He never WOULD have got away ef I hadn't been locked up in Jim Hatcher's smokehouse with two men settin' outside with guns fer a solid month, keepin' watch on me day an' night. I wuz--" "That's all for to-night," snapped Barry impatiently. "You get out of town at once. Mart will be waiting for you down below Granny Neff's cabin,--this side of the tanyard,--as arranged." "What about that other business? Mart'll want to know when we're to--" "He knows. The Paul Revere goes south day after to-morrow morning. If the plans are changed before that time, I'll get word to him. It may not be necessary to do anything at all. You've given me information that may bring the old woman to her senses." "Them two fellers that come up on the boat to-day. Air you sure you c'n--" "That's all for to-night," interrupted Barry, and strode off up the street, leaving Jasper Suggs, sometime Simon Braley of the loathsome Girty stock, to wend his lonely way out into a silence as black as the depths of his own benighted soul. The night was sultry. Up in the marshy fastnesses of Lake Stansbury all the frogs in the universe seemed to have congregated for a grand festival of song. The treble of baby frogs, the diapason of ancient frogs, the lusty alto of frogs in the prime of life, were united in an unbroken, penetrating chant to the starless sky. The melancholy hoot of the owl, the blithesome chirp of the cricket, even the hideous yawp of the roaming loon, were lost in the din and clatter of Lake Stansbury's mighty chorus. There was promise of storm in the lifeless air. Zachariah, resting his elbows on the fence, confided this prognostication to an almost invisible Hattie on the opposite side of the barrier between two back yards. "Ah allus covers my haid up wid de blanket--an' de bolster--an' de piller when hit's astormin'," said Hattie, in an awed undertone. "An' Ah squeals lak a pig ev' time hit claps."