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 "I said I was a Cullen and of course concerned about him. I don't know how well that satisfied her; but she's the sort that likes to talk, so she mentioned several significant things. It seemed that when her sister married James, the son, the father was very well off; they traveled in Europe; she showed me some of the things her sister sent from abroad. She said the old man made a lot of money once in Michigan; but he spent it all in a few years; then he got some more money; and spent that. It seemed rather queer to me after the way Bennet, my cousin, had spoken of James Quinlan as an employee—a sawyer who'd lost his fingers in the mill. Other things were strange which are harder to describe, Mr. Loutrelle—like the chest of silver my grandfather gave young James Quinlan when he married and the porringer and mug and spoon he gave the boy, Robert. Mrs. Monahan showed them to me. It was like my grandfather to give things; he used to make gifts for policy. But I wondered what 'policy' he had to follow with old James Quinlan; I mean I wondered what James Quinlan knew about grandfather," Ethel said directly. "For that is what the letter from Huston Adley must mean. What do you think about it, Mr. Loutrelle?"

"What do you?" Barney returned.

She smiled. "You answer like Asa Redbird."

"I've been with Asa most of the last days."

"Yes. You did not write me what you thought after you went out to the Rock; you said you found things just as I said they would be. But what did you think from them?"

"I thought that you were correct in believing that somebody was killed there," Barney said quietly.

"By Kincheloe," Ethel continued, quivering a little,