“Well, sir, all that summer he kep’ tryin’ to make up with old Hickey. ‘Bout every two weeks he’d show up for another try, but it wan’t any use. I could ‘a’ told him he was wastin’ his time, fer when the old man made up his mind, he stayed sot. But it wan’t none o’ my business, so I jest let him keep on ‘till he found out hisself. As I says, he kep’ comin’ all summer long, an’ then, about this time two years gone, he giv it up, an’ I ain’t seen him sence. I allus wondered though why in time he kep’ packin’ them empty grips along with him; but I ain’t never discovered it, an’ don’t reckon I ever will.”
Merriwell smiled at the old fellow’s tone of regret.
“Maybe he had left some clothes, or something like that, in the house, which he wanted to take away,” he suggested.
Lysander Cobmore considered this for a moment in silence. Then he shook his head slowly.
“That don’t seem nachural, some ways,” he returned. “Old man Hickey was that set agin’ Jellison he’d ‘a’ throwed anythin’ he owned outer the winder.”
“On account of the way he behaved to the daughter, I suppose?” Dick mused.
Cobmore wagged his stubby chin whisker emphatically.
“That’s what,” he returned quickly. “Some said he took to runnin’ with this other woman, an’ that’s what killed her. Waal, I ain’t sorry the way things has turned out. Jellison ain’t the sort of man I like to have dealings with. Tew cantankerous, you know. Now Lawrence is a nice, pleasant-spoken young feller, an’ lets me make what I kin, lettin’ the house to folks as is out huntin’ like you boys. ’Tain’t likely Jellison would——”
He broke off abruptly as the crash of a gun sounded with startling distinctness from the silent woods. The next instant came a pattering shower of fine shot which cut the twigs and branches of the near-by bushes, and caused each man to duck instinctively.
Merriwell was the first of the party to recover his presence of mind.