“Come with me,” he said.
Gripping the girl he started with her toward her home but a short distance away. When they arrived the front door was ajar. A woman, with eyes red from weeping, looked at Hubbard in silence.
“Here!” he said gruffly. “This child ought to be kept to home. She’ll fall into the well.”
Mrs. Harper merely reached out her arms for her daughter. Hubbard remained standing awkwardly.
“Have you heard anything of Harper yet?” he asked.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” replied the woman.
Hubbard turned on his heel. Waiting for him by his horses, was the deputy sheriff. The two further discussed the disappearance.
“If you yourself wasn’t so well known, Jeremiah,” finally declared the official, “they’d sure be thinkin’ you was in it some way.”
“Why?” grunted the farmer, as he untied the lines.
“Well, everybody knows you an’ Harper been lawin’ it for years over that boundary line.”