"Where there's smoke there's fire. The more smoke the more fire," he said cheerfully, opening a window to let out some of the smoke.
"It doesn't follow," Augusta argued.
"Besides, I'm going hunting."
"Again? Didn't you hunt all day yesterday?"
"No. I followed a fox. It wasn't hunting. It was gambling. But I've got a system worked out to beat him. I figured it out during the night that, at the rate he was going when I saw him last, he will in about three quarters of an hour from now be just turning on his first lap around the world. I shall be at the turn waiting for him."
"I hope he shows a proper sense of his engagements," said Augusta politely. "It would be annoying if he stopped for a drink or anything on the way. But I wish you had timed the meeting to come off before you filled the house quite so full of smoke. I like to smell the tang of wood smoke. But I don't like to eat it."
They ate a hearty and a cheerful breakfast, and Jimmie prepared for instant departure.
"I may be gone all day," he announced, "It'd be just like the scalawag to fool me and go around the other way."
"It's probably a stray dog, anyway," she teased after him as he started up the hill.
Jimmie went over the brow of the hill out of sight of the house. When he was safe from observation he hid his gun securely in the hollow hole of a tree, and, skirting away around the hills out of sight of the sugar camp and the road, he made his way as fast as his legs could carry him toward Jethniah Gamblin's place of business.