truth about it."

"Why, mother, I can't believe it!" cried Harriet, her brow wrinkling in
perplexity. "He hardly ever went with her or talked to her."

"He took her out home with him in a buggy six or seven times to my
knowledge," declared Mrs. Floyd, "and there's no telling how often he
saw her at home. He is awfully thick with her father. I never was
fooled in a woman; she is in love with him, and right now she is
worried to death about him. She couldn't hide her anxiety, and asked a
good many round-about questions about where he was gone to, and if we
knew whether the sheriff was hunting for him now, and if we thought Mr.
Westerfelt would prosecute him."

Harriet laughed. "Well, I never dreamt there was a thing between those
two. When he asked her to go with him in his buggy out home, I thought
it was because she lived on the road to his father's, and that he just
did it to accommodate her, and--"

"Oh, I've no doubt that is what _he_ did it for, darling, but she was
falling in love with him all the time, and now that he is in trouble,
she can't hide it. Do you know her conduct this morning has set me to
thinking? The night you and I spent over at Joe Long's I heard Wambush
came very near being arrested with a barrel of whiskey he was taking to
town, and that he managed to throw the officers off his track while he
was talking to Hettie in our back yard. Do you know it ain't a bit
unlikely that she helped him play that trick somehow? They say he was
laughing down at the store after that about how he gave them the slip.
I'll bet she helped him."