Again Slocum started, and his face wore a look of intense wonder mixed with fear.
“After you looked about for what you didn’t find, you spilled the kerosene about and set fire so’s nobody could get what maybe you’d overlooked.
“Then you scooted back in the corn lot and hid the can in the big blasted chestnut stump, and when a hue and cry was raised walked down as innercent as May, from hoein’ corn that wasn’t yet above ground!”
By this time Slocum had pulled himself together, and his defiance returned.
“Woman, you are crazy, and what you say is perfectully redeclous; I’ll have you behind asylum bars, if not in jail. Mere talk! You can’t prove a word you say, and what is this ’thing’ that I couldn’t find and wanted to burn? Just tell me that!”
“Prove? Oh, yes, I can; Lauretta Ann Lane is no random talker.
“Here’s the pants you wore, and that you sold the pedler the same afternoon—they smell yet o’ kerosene, and here’s the piece ye tore out on the winder-catch!” And Mrs. Lane whipped the telltale trousers out of her egg-basket.
“The kerosene can’s in the stump yet, but I’ve got it all straight; that poor Polack woman you turned out of house and home seen you hide it. Now what else was there?” And Mrs. Lane affected a lapse of memory.
“Oh, yes; you wanted to know what you was a-lookin’ for. Why, don’t you know? It was a big lawyer’s envelope marked ‘Papers concerning the Turner Mill Farm Property,—to be recorded.’”