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 over and over. Some of the telegrams had been duplicated. Two to other persons at Ossokosee—Farmer Wooden one of them—were added. They had no available New York acquaintances. Further dispatches were useless. If the enigma had a simple answer it was as effective as one in which lay a tragedy. The silence might any moment explain itself as a calamity or a burlesque. Must they wait another day for a solution—or for none?

"We wont do that, I think, Gerald," he said. "No. If this delay keeps on we will leave here to-morrow and start for home, the Ossokosee. Even if we find the doors shut in our faces we'll find people glad to take us in, forlorn creatures that we are." There was not much mirth in his laugh.

"I—I think we'd better go home," said Gerald; and this prospect brightened him a little.

Mr. Banger was on jury duty all that day, and, much to his disgust, he was locked up for the night with eleven other good and true men. He sent word to his viceroy, Joe, that he "couldn't tell when Wilson Miller (the town undertaker) would know black wasn't white, and let them all get home to their business