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 downright damn lie, and the next time I see her I'm going to"

"Thing to do," said Bones, "is not to see her. That'll stop the talk quicker than anything else. She can't say much about you if you never go around there, and the minute she quits yapping about it everybody else will. For cryin' out loud what did you take her to the game for?"

"Brad asked me to."

"You were on one side of the cheering-section," Bones went on, "and I was a mile away from you, on the other side. But I'll bet you hadn't been in your seats three minutes before the word came breezing along, 'Jock's got Eunice Hathaway here, and you oughta see the coat she has on!

Jock moaned. "That's what started this. Somebody back of us seemed to think I'd given Eunice the coat! At least I'm pretty sure that's what they said. It opened my eyes, I'll tell the world! I'd never thought till that minute that anybody was putting that kind of a construction on the thing." He took up his banjo and picked at one string thoughtfully. "Well, I'm—cured," he finished. "I'm through going around there. Brad'll have to come here, from now on, if he and I are going to see each other."

When he went downstairs he was apparently in high spirits. But all the rest of that afternoon his heart was heavy with an odd cold sense of foreboding, insidious, impossible to dispel. "What's the matter with me?" he asked himself savagely. "Why should I feel like this? Nothing can happen as long as I stay away from there! Not a damn thing!"

But still the premonition clung, with clammy fingers.