“When Nancy and I were in the avenue, an automobile drove up and stopped near us. Two men, who were in it, began fighting. They fought out of the car and on the road and one of them hit the other an awful blow. The man is dead, I’m afraid, because the other man pulled him over into the bushes and left him there. Then he jumped into the motor and rushed away. The dead man is over in the bushes down there now.” She pointed down the avenue. “What do you think we’d better do?”
Billie had been too agitated to realize how strange the story sounded until she put it into words.
“He’s there, I tell you,” she exclaimed impatiently, when Edward made no reply. “You look as if you didn’t believe me.”
“It does sound very much like a curious dream. Why should people be killing each other in this wilderness?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. But it happened just as I told you.”
“You are not playing a joke on me, are you?”
There was nothing in the world which irritated Billie so much as to have her word doubted. Her father had often said that she was absurdly truthful, and as a matter of fact she stuck to the letter of the truth with scrupulous care. She always believed other people, because she expected the truth. And she seldom got anything else. It, therefore, seemed incredible to meet some one who could believe that she would invent a tale just for the sake of excitement.
With a slightly contemptuous spark in her fine gray eyes, she turned to Edward and said,
“If you have any doubts on the subject, you had better come with me and see for yourself.”
“Don’t you—think—we’d better wa-a——” he stammered, and broke off with an embarrassed laugh.