"But why was this not told to me before?" said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly.
"Why not at the time? Why," she demanded almost fiercely, turning from
the one to the other, "has this been kept from me?"

"I'll tell ye why," said Patterson, sinking with crushed submission into
a chair. "When I found he wasn't where he ought to be, I got to lookin'
elsewhere. I knew the track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I
examined; and found he had turned off the high road somewhere beyond the
lagoon, jist as if he was makin' a bee line here."

"Well," said Mrs. Tucker, breathlessly.

"Well," said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an accustomed martyr,
"mebbe I'm a God-forsaken idiot, but I reckon he DID come yer. And mebbe
I'm that much of a habitooal lunatic, but thinking so, I calkilated
you'ld know it without tellin'."

With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the quick blood rush
to her cheeks, although she knew not why. But they were apparently
satisfied with her ignorance, for Patterson resumed, yet more
gloomily:--

"Then if he wasn't hidin' here beknownst to you, he must have changed
his mind agin and got away by the embarcadero. The only thing wantin' to
prove that idea is to know how he got a boat, and what he did with the
hoss. And thar's one more idea, and ez that can't be proved," continued
Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, "mebbe it's accordin' to God's
laws."