unbearable to one who has behaved foolishly and knows it. Ford would
not have borne the look if he had seen it; but he was caressing a
bruise on the point of his jaw and staring dejectedly into the meager
blaze which rimmed the lower edge of the stove's front door, and so
remained unconscious of his companion's impertinence.

"Who was the lady, Sandy?" he begged dispiritedly, after a silence.

"Search _me_" Sandy replied again succinctly. "Some stranger that blew
in here with a license and the preacher and said you was her fee-ancy."
(Sandy read romances, mostly, and permitted his vocabulary to profit
thereby.) "You never denied it, even when she said your name was a nomdy
gair; and you let her marry you, all right."

"Are you sure of that?" Ford looked up from under lowering eyebrows.

"Unh-hunh--that's what you done, all right." Sandy's voice was
dishearteningly positive.

"Lordy me!" gasped Ford under his breath.

There was a silence which slid Sandy's interest back into his book. He
turned a leaf and was half-way down the page before he was interrupted
by more questions.

"Say! Where's she at now?" Ford spoke with a certain furtive lowering of
his voice.

"I d' know." Sandy read a line with greedy interest. "She took the
'leven-twenty," he added then. Another mental lapse. "You seen her to