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 usage of other days. She turned to Simpson, triumphant over him as if this last piece of evidence had put the rope around his neck.

"Now you see!" she said.

Simpson was spared the embarrassment of trying to answer with any kind of defense by the appearance of a woman on the sunny porch.

"Why, that looks like Frank!" she said.

"It is Frank, mother," Eudora assured her, that pitch of triumph still in her voice, her suspicious, accusing eyes resting a moment on Simpson where he stood encumbered with his load as if he intended to saddle himself and go.

"Well, of all things!" the elder woman marvelled. She came through the gate in the side picket fence and joined them, shading her eyes against the sun as she looked after the horse. "Did this man bring him home?"

"No, he brought this man home," Eudora replied, too indignant to grin over the undignified situation of the man, standing there with a muddy wet saddle under his arm.

"Of all things!" Mrs. Ellison wondered, looking now at Tom Simpson, an unfriendly question in her eyes.

Simpson touched his hat with his disengaged hand.

"Quite remarkable," he said.

"Who is he, Eudora?" Mrs. Ellison inquired, speaking over Simpson's head as completely as if he did not stand in plain sight.

"He's a green man belonging to Coburn's outfit, he says, mother. They got into some kind of a row down at Drumwell last night—what was it you got into down there?"