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 cheerless assurance, as one speaks when condoling an irremediable loss. She put her arm around Louise and hugged her in a sort of affectionate fierceness, as if she defied somebody who had dared her to express such sympathy.

"Ain't it awful? Mr. Crowley and the marshal killed!" Mrs. Cowgill said.

"Mr. Crowley? Who said he was killed?" Maud inquired.

"We heard they shot him dead."

"There he stands, in the door," said Maud. "Honey, you'd better come on home with me."

Louise faced her with desperate courage, cool now, and controlled, as if she presented herself to the surgeon's knife for an operation that balanced life and death.

"Maud, do you know what really happened?" she asked.

"Yes, I was in the bank."

"You was!" Mrs. Cowgill exploded.

Crowley, the bank cashier, was explaining to his eager patrons the particulars of the robbery. The crowd was divided between him and the melancholy business going forward under the coroner's direction; the four women were left alone at the street corner, where they stood in the dusty roadway of the public square.

"I'd gone to the bank for some silver to make change for the day," Maud said. "Windy Moore and two or three others were there—Tom Laylander at the cash