T was the day following the burial of the body of Dan Willis. Old man Purdy, whom Carson had gone to see, was at Dilk's cross-roads store with a basket of fresh eggs, which he had brought to exchange for their market value in coffee. Several other farmers were seated about the store on nail-kegs and soap-boxes whittling sticks and chewing tobacco, their slow tongues busy with the details of the recent death and interment.

Old Purdy was speaking of how the children had discovered the body, and remarked that it would have been found several hours sooner if Carson Dwight had only taken the shorter road that day to Springtown instead of the longer.

“Why, Dwight come from Darley, didn't he?” asked Dilk, as he wrote down the number of eggs he had counted on a piece of brown paper on the counter and waited before continuing.

“Why, yes,” Purdy made answer; “he told me, as we were goin' through the work he had to do at my house, that he had gone to Springtown an' stayed all that night an' then rid on to me.”

The store-keeper's hands hovered over the basket for an instant, then they rested on its edge. “Well, I can't make out what under the sun Dwight went so far out o' his way for. It's fully five mile farther, and the road is so rough and washed out that it's mighty nigh out of use.”

“Well, that does look kind o' funny, come to think of it,” admitted Purdy, as he gazed into the bland faces around him. “I never thought of it before, but it certainly looks odd, to say the least.”

“Of course thar may not be a thing in it,” said Dilk, in a guarded tone, “but it does all seem strange, especially after we've heard so much talk about the threats passin' betwixt them very two men. I mean, you see, neighbors, that it sort o' looks, providential that—that Dan met with the accident before Dwight an' him come together over here. That's what I mean.”

All heads nodded gravely, all minds were busy, each in its own individual way, and stirred by something more exciting than the mere accidental death of Willis or the formality of his burial.

There was a rather prolonged silence broken only by the click of the eggs which Dilk was counting into a new tin dish-pan. When he had finished he weighed out the coffee and emptied it into the white, smoothly ironed poke Purdy's wife had sent along for that purpose. Then he looked straight into Purdy's eyes.

“Did you notice—if thar ain't no harm in axin'—whether Dwight seemed—well, anyways upset or—or bothered while he was at your house?”

“Well, I didn't,” replied the farmer; “but my wife was in the room while he was doin' the writin' that had to be done, an' I remember now she axed me after he left ef he was a drinkin' man. I told her no, I didn't think he was now, though he used to be sorter wild, an' I wanted to know why she axed me. She said she never had seed anybody's hands shake like his did while he held the pen, an' that he had a quar look about the eyes like he'd lost a power o' sleep.”

“Was—was anything said in his presence about Willis's death that you remember of?” the storekeeper pursued, with the skill of a legal crossexaminer, while the listeners stared, their cuds of tobacco compressed between their grinders.

Purdy's face had grown rigid, almost as that of an important witness on the stand in court. “I can't just remember,” he said. “There was so much talk about it on all sides that day. Oh yes—now I recall that—well, you see we was all at my house, eager for news, and it struck me, you know, as if Dwight wasn't as anxious to talk as the rest—in fact, it looked like he sorter wanted to change the subject.”

“Oh!” The exclamation was breathed simultaneously from several mouths.

“Of course, neighbors,” Purdy began, in alarm, “don't understand me for one minute to—” But he broke off, for Dilk had something else to observe.

“Them two men was at dagger's-p'ints, I've heard,” he declared. “Friends on both sides was movin' heaven an' earth to keep 'em apart. Now if Dwight did take that long, roundabout road from Darley to Springtown, why, they didn't meet. But ef Dwight went the way he always has tuck, an' I've seed 'im out this way often enough, why—” Dilk raised his hands and held them poised significantly in mid-air.

“But the coroner's jury found,” said Purdy, “that Willis was shootin' at a target he'd stuck up on a tree with his own knife, an' that his young hoss was skittish, an'—”

“All the better proof of bad blood betwixt 'em,” burst from a farmer on a nail-keg. “The truth is, some hold now that Willis was out practising so he could wing that particular game. The only thing I see agin what you-uns seem to think is that it's been kept quiet. Dwight is a lawyer an' knows the law, an' he wouldn't cover a thing like that up when all he'd have to do would be to establish proof that it was done in self-defence an' git his walking-papers.”

“Thar you are!” Dilk said, in a voice that rang with conviction; “but suppose one thing—suppose this. Suppose the provocation wasn't exactly strong enough to quite justify killing. Suppose Dwight, made mad by all he'd heard, drawed an' fired without due warning, and suppose while he was thar in that quiet spot he had time to think it all over and decided that he'd stand a better chance of escape by not bein' known in the matter. A body never can tell. You kin bet your boots if Dwight did kill 'im an' hid the fact, he had ample legal reasons fer not wantin' to be mixed up in it.”

The seed was sown, and upon soil well suited to rapid germination and growth. By the next day the noxious weed had its head well above the ground, and, like the crab-grass the farmers knew to be so tenaciously prolific, it was spreading rapidly.