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Billy found Mrs. Keeler peeling onions in the cook-house and after some trouble made her understand what was wanted. While she was shedding her apron and hunting for her hat he went outside. Maurice's school-books and slate lay on the bench beneath the hop vine. Billy grinned as his eyes fell on them. He climbed to the top of the gate-post and searched the surrounding fields for his chum, locating him finally down near the ditch, a lonely and pathetic figure seated on a little knoll, methodically topping mangles with a sickle. His back was toward Billy and it took all the latter's self restraint to refrain from giving the rally call, but he remembered what he had promised Maurice's father. So he slid down from the post and picking up the slate, produced a stub of slate-pencil from a pocket and wrote a message in symbols. Then on the other side of the slate he duplicated the message, adding the necessary key to the code. This was the message that Billy wrote A fat red-squirrel frisked down a tree close beside hia and halted, pop-eyed, to gaze upon him. "I tell you," Billy addressed it gravely, "it takes a good woman to steady a man." The statement was not of his own creation. He had heard it somewhere but he had never understood its meaning before. It seemed the fitting thing to say now and there was nobody to say it to except the squirrel. The deacon was curious to learn what caused that smell. He approached a little closer to the walls and scrutinized the ground carefully. It was stained with black patches of something and he saw that the planks of the wall and the portion of the derrick showing above it also were stained a greenish-black. He ran a finger over a greasy splash and sniffed. Then he backed away slowly, now nodding his head. He knew what had happened, just as well as though he had seen it. The careless drillers had exploded a barrel of coal-oil, and perhaps wrecked the drill. Yes, nothing surer. That had been the explosion which shook the windows of his home and awoke him several nights ago. Keeler and Wilson had heard it too. Well, it was too bad after all the trouble and expense Scroggie had gone to to find water for the Settlement..
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kez_ h (Kez_h)
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Conrad
"Then that's all there is to it; you keep Lost Man, that's what you do." "After a while the old man got strong enough to go home. Soon after that he disappeared an' stayed away fer nearly three weeks. Then, all at once, he turned up at home ag'in. He came over to Stanhope's house every now an' ag'in to visit with him. One night he says to Frank after they had had supper: 'Frank,' says he, 'I've been over to Cleveland an' I've made my will. I've left you everythin' I own. You're the only decent person I've known since I lost my ol' mother. I want that thousand acre woods to stand jest as God made it as long as I'm alive; when I die you kin do what you like with it.' Then afore Frank could even thank him the old man got up an' hobbled out. Four shadowy forms drifted apart and were lost in deeper shadows. The golden moon rode peacefully in the summer sky. "On a golden, Indian summer day like this," she finished and closed her eyes as his arms went about her..
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