"She said, 'Yes,' he had got through his work and would be at home most of the time.
"I said: 'Did he ever do any of the kind of work he has been doing at the different places he worked at before he came to Orangeville? For he don't look to me,' I said, 'as if he had worked on a ranch or done road work much.'
"She said, 'He never had done hard work till we came to Orangeville, having only returned to this country from India about a month before coming here, and when we were in India, Penloe went to the University of Calcutta as soon as he was ready to enter as a student. I lived in that city nineteen years.'
"'Why, have you lived in India,' I said.
"Yes,' she answered. 'I left New York a year after I was married. My husband represented a New York company in India. He died six years ago, but we continued to reside there until Penloe finished his University course.'
"I was clean taken back by what she said. I said, 'It's none of my business, Mrs. Lenair, but I don't see why a fine looking young man like Penloe, with the education you say he has had, don't get light, pleasant work, if he has to work out, instead of working at such hard places with the toughest crowds of men.'
"All she said was: 'That is his work.'
"Why, Mrs. Herne, do you know that he worked on the streets of the city of Chicago, and for three months with a gang of a thousand men on the Coast Railroad between Los Angeles and San Francisco! Then he was at the Oakdale cattle ranch, cowboying it, with that fast gang of boys that they keep there. Then he worked for awhile at the Simmons ranch, which is four miles from Roseland, and Simmons always keeps the hardest crew of men on his place. They go to Roseland every other night or so and dance at those low dancing-houses with bad women. They get drunk, fight, and swear all the time. Simmons' ranch has got the name of being the toughest place to work anywhere round here.
"One day when Dan was in Roseland, he saw a man he knew from the Simmons ranch, so he thought he would hear what the fellow had to say about Penloe, as we both are curious to find out all we can about that singular young man.
"Dan said: 'Is Penloe working on the Simmons ranch?'