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"Well, I declare! Well, don't that beat a hoss a-flyin'!"

He could not take his eyes off her. He could not realize what had happened. She seemed entirely unlike what he remembered of her in the courthouse yard. Some mysterious change had come over every line and feature, yet through all this variation of memory, she was the same girl who had so held his attention and stirred his pulse at Lanesburg. That meeting seemed ages ago.

Nessie was first to break the long silence of staring.

"You was one of them pistol shooters, wasn't you, Abner?" Her voice carried neither surprise nor reproach.

Abner nodded in silence.

She regarded him solemnly. "Don't you know that's wrong, Abner—on Sunday night, too?"

"Perry Northcutt busted up our ball game; we thought we would bust up his church."

"You know it isn't Perry Northcutt's church—it's God's church."

The girl's tone was level enough, but she breathed as if labouring under some strong excitement; then she turned with the lamp and started upstairs.

Abner followed her in the grip of a growing depression. He felt that the night's enterprise somehow had failed. Nessie, apparently, had not thrilled at his wildness and bravery, although it was a fact the oil lamp shook so in her hands that she could hardly carry it.

They turned together down the long upper hall in the tensely strung silence. Evidently she knew what room he occupied; she paused before his door for him to enter. As he went in she said in her hushed, reproachful tones, "Goodnight, Abner."

The boy returned her good-night gloomily and went inside.

He lighted his own lamp, took out Tug's automatic and laid it on the rickety dresser whose cracked mirror gave him back a travesty of his own image.

He began taking off his shoes and trousers in great de-