"Abe Aden was a lawyer, or suthin' like that. He was a dabster at most things, includin' horse-tradin'. My father had put all the money he had in the world in Abe's hands, in some trade or other. We tried to git it back when father was kill't so sudden in the sawmill.
"Just erbout then Abe got inter trouble in a horse-trade. He was a good deal of a Gyp—so 'twas said. He left everything in Lem's hands and skedaddled out West. But he didn't leave no five hundred dollars in Lem's hands for us—no, sir!" and the old man shook his head ruminatively.
"No, sir. He likely got away with that five hundred to pay his fare, and so escaped jail."
"You don't know that, Bob," said his wife, gravely.
"No. I don't know it. But I know that my marm and I suffered all that winter because of losin' the five hundred. I was only a boy. I hadn't got my growth. She overworked because of that rascal's dishonesty, and it broke her down and killed her. I loved my marm," he added simply.
"'Course you did—'course you did, Bob," said his wife, briskly. Then she smiled about at the tableful of young folk, and confessed: "He begun callin' me 'marm,' like he did his mother, right away when we was married. She'd been dead since he was a little boy, and I considered it the sweetest compliment Bob could pay me. I've been 'marm' to him ever since."
"You sure have," declared Mr. Buckham, stoutly. "But that ain't bringin' my poor old marm back—nor the five hundred dollars. We never did hear direct from Abe Aden; but by and by a leetle gal wandered back here to the neighborhood. Said she was Abe's darter. He and her mother was lost in a big fire in some Western city; and she'd lost her sister, too."
"Poor child!" sighed the old lady. "You couldn't hold a grudge against the child, Bob."
"Who says I done so?" demanded the farmer. "No, sir! I never even seed the child more'n once or twice. But I know her name was Marion. And I heard her tell her story. The Chicago fire was a nine days' wonder, and this fire the gal's parents were lost in, was much similar, I should say. She'd seen her father and mother and the house they lived in, all swept away together—in a moment, almost. She and her sister escaped, but were separated in the refugees' camp and she couldn't never find the other child again. This Marion was old enough to remember about her Uncle Lem, and where he used to live; so the Relief Committee sent her here—glad ter git rid of her on sech easy terms, I s'pose. But Lem Aden had drapped out o' sight before then, and none of us folks knowed where he'd gone to."
"And that little girl was Mrs. Eland?" Ruth ventured to ask, for the farmer's remembrances of old times did not interest the little girls. Posy was heaping their plates with good things to eat. The picnic dinner in the woods had been forgotten.