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I can show you where there are stones, anyway!" And so with many a sneer and jeer, and with an atmosphere of extreme tension pervading the whole party, Junes was allowed to lead the way to the spot of his choice.
Bottle after bottle was opened, and soon one of the experts began to snore; and it was the professor himself who broke up the merry party by saying: "Gentlemens; to-morrow have we a long day and a long ride before us to test the other fields. And the Herr Prospector Junes he must ride before us always, is it not? The test places to locate together with his comrade. And this so good man see!
My mother and sister sketched continually, and Miss Shepard was always ready to tell us the story of the historical features which we encountered; it astounded me to note how much she knew about things which she had never before seen. One afternoon we drove down from surrounding heights to Florence, which lay in a golden haze characteristic of Italian Junes in this latitude.
She does not pretend to be youthful, nor does she trouble herself that she has seen the roses of more Junes than many of the younger women who gather round her. She has not had to say, Comme je regrette Mon bras si dodu,
Aided by Dick, he had now finished attending to the dying man, whom they had taken into the professor's tent, and who lay gasping painfully, with the air whistling through the hole Junes' bullet had made in his lungs. He whispered something hoarsely and painfully to the professor.
The big wachtmeister rubbed his throttled throat feelingly, and grunted dissent, whilst the accused and desperate quartette broke into angry protestations. "Deny it as you like," said the professor, "Grosman swore it with his dying breath, Junes swore it after he had shot him, Sydney saw the salting with his own eyes."
Now, however, the whole camp was astir; the old professor was washing in front of his tent in the tiny modicum of water allowed him for the purpose, boys were hurrying here and there preparing breakfast; and Dick smiled grimly as he noticed that as Junes and Grosman entered the experts' tent they carefully closed the fly behind them.
The four scared men raised their voices in a chorus of protestations, in the middle of which Dick's eye caught sight of something over Junes' shoulder that caused him to start involuntarily. About half a mile away a small cloud of dust was rising. Something or somebody was coming, and quickly too.
That the professor had invented a plausible lie on the spur of the instant to save him, was of course obvious; but it was apparently not all lie, for he had certainly drugged the wine the previous evening! But the stones, who had got them? He could have sworn that Junes had told the truth as he rode away murderer though he was! And Grosman, would a dying man lie?
And behold the result, the witness of the miracle: In the domed sacristy, the fountain cooling this sultry afternoon of June as it has cooled four hundred Junes and more since set up, arch and pilasters and statued gables hung with garlands by that particular Robbia; cooling and refreshing us with its empty trough and closed taps, without a drop of real water!
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