"Gee!" says I. "Are you awake, too? I thought you was asleep an hour ago."

"I was," says he, "but when this Hen Dorsett debate breaks loose I came back to earth. I'll gamble that the old woman's right."

"The old man's mighty positive," says I. "Wonder how long it'll be before we get the returns?"

"Perhaps half an hour," says Leonidas. "He'll have to thrash it all out with Ase before he starts back. We might as well sit up and wait. Anyway I want to see which gets the best of it."

"Let's have a smoke, then," says I.

"Why not go along with the old man?" says Leonidas. "If he finds he's wrong he may come back and lie about it."

Well, it was a fool thing to do, when you think about it, but somehow Leonidas had a way of lookin' at things that was different from other folks. He didn't know any more about that there Hen Dorsett than I did, but he seemed just as keen as if it was all in the family. We had hustled our clothes on and was sneakin' down the front stairs as easy as we could when we hears from Homer.

"I heard you dressing," says he, "so I got up, too. I haven't been asleep yet."

"Then come along with us," says Leonidas. "It'll do you good. We're only going up the street to find out when it was that the cars struck Hen Dorsett."

Homer didn't savvy, but he didn't care. Mainly he wanted comp'ny. He whispered to us to go easy, suspectin' that if we woke up Mother Bickell she'd want to feed him some more clam fritters. By the time we'd unlocked the front door though, she was after us, but all she wanted was to make Homer wrap a shawl around his head to keep out the night air.

"And don't you dare take it off until you get back," says she. Homer was glad to get away so easy and said he wouldn't. But he was a sight, lookin' like a Turk with a sore throat.

The old man had routed Ase Horner out by the time we got there, and they was havin' it hot and heavy. Ase said it wasn't either November nor March when he went up after Hen Dorsett, but the middle of October. He knew because he'd just begun shingling his kitchen and the line storm came along before he got it finished. More'n that, it was in '84, for that was the year he ran for sheriff.

"See here, gentlemen," says Leonidas, "isn't it 

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