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There wa'n't. There didn't seem to be anybody to home. "Now, gentlemen, seems as though you'd see how 't was when I tell ye. There's an old white and yaller cat, with a kinder sassy patch over her eye," Mr. Peaslee's meek voice here took on a trace of heat, "that's been a-pesterin' the life out o' me goin' on a year.

Standing behind taller bushes, the stranger had fallen behind lower ones, and only while his falling figure was describing the narrow segment of a circle had he been visible. But the glimpse was enough. Mr. Peaslee's jaw dropped, his face turned white. But the next moment he gave a great sigh of relief. He saw the man rise and slip into cover of the bushes, and so disappear through the orchard.

But other matters were claiming Mr. Peaslee's attention. Out from behind the screen formed by the asparagus plumes, the currant-bushes, the sunflowers, and the lilacs, all of which grew not so far from the spot on the fence where the Calico Cat had been sitting, fell a man! Solomon had a mere glimpse.

When the grand jury dispersed after Mr. Peaslee's confession, Farnsworth, first speaking a few words to Paige, the state's attorney, hurried toward the Union School. As he expected, he met Miss Ware coming from it on her way to her boarding-house. He waved his hat, and called: "Jim's free!" As he reached her side he added, "He didn't fire the shot at all."

While the state's attorney held wide the door, Jake Hibbard solemnly pushed into the room a great wheeled chair, in which sat the small, wiry, furtive-eyed Lamoury. Mr. Peaslee's heart sank as he saw the wheeled chair, and noted the great bandages about the Frenchman's head and arm.

Lamoury," said Paige, with a very casual air, "behind those bushes is a broken board." "So-o?" said Pete. "Any one who was there had an excellent chance to study the fastenings of Mr. Peaslee's hen-house door." "Mais, Ah'll was tol' you Ah'll not be dere, me!" cried Pete, alarmed and excited. "That," said Mr. Paige, calmly, "is the only place where you could be and get shot from the boy's window.

Peaslee's fears not been so keen, he would have taken some comfort from this conversation; but as it was he felt that the lawyer was dangerous; he feared that Pete really was badly hurt. It would go hard, then, with Jim. It would, by the same token, go hard with himself should he confess. Suddenly he turned and rushed into Upham's store. "Upham," said he, "I want that!"

Instead, he wore a light gray business suit, his collar was very knowing in cut, and his cravat of dark blue was caught with a gold pin. "Citified smart Aleck," was Mr. Peaslee's characterization. To tell the truth, he mistrusted the man's ability, and was afraid of him. If that fellow knew, Mr. Peaslee felt that it would go hard with him. Generally, Paige was popular.

Peaslee's spirits were rising; the grand jury could not believe such a "passel of lies" only, only was one of those holes "beeg as mah t'umb" made, perchance, by a marble? "That's a mighty moving narrative," commented Sampson, dryly. "Did I understand you to say that you were hit in the head or the arm?" "Bose of it," averred Pete, without winking.

But I ain't go for hide in de bush! Ah'll be honest mans, me. Ah'll go for walk where all mans can see, ain't it? What Ah'll go hide for, me?" Paige drew a square on Mr. Peaslee's side of the fence, directly opposite the bushes. "That," said he, "is Mr. Peaslee's hen-house," and he brushed the chalk from his fingers with an air of indifference. "So-o?" cried Pete, with an air of pleased surprise.