happen!" repeated Jim, in pure surprise. Certainly his father knew much better than he how it had happened.

   "Speak out!" said Mr. Edwards, impatiently. "How did you come to shoot that man? I want to know about it."

   "Me!" cried Jim, in complete bewilderment. "I—I haven't shot any man, father! You know I haven't."

   Mr. Edwards, never a man of nice observation, and now bewil

   dered with anger and headache, took his son's genuine astonishment for mere pretense and subterfuge. Were not the facts plain?

   "I don't want any nonsense about this," he said incisively. "I heard your gun. I saw the man fall. No one else but you could possibly have fired it. It's useless to lie, and I won't stand it. Tell me at once what happened."

   "I didn't shoot him, father. You

    know

   I didn't!" reiterated Jim, more and more dumfounded. "I don't know how it happened, honest Injun—I don't, father!"

   Mr. Edwards's mouth shut tight.

   He swept the room with his eyes until they rested upon the gun in the rack over the mantelpiece.

   He stepped forward, took it down, and examined it. Holding it in his hands, he gazed about the floor. A rag which the ashes in the fireplace had not wholly covered caught his attention.

   "You cleaned the gun and put it away," he said grimly. "Then you tried to hide the rag with which you cleaned it," and he touched the bit of cloth sticking from the ashes contemptuously with his foot. "What do you expect me to think from that?"

   Jim was silent. The boy was unlike his father in many ways, but they were alike in this: they both were proud. Each would meet an unjust accusation in silence. And Jim was beginning to show another of his father's characteristics. A still anger was beginning to burn in him against this man who accused him of a deed which he himself had done, and he felt rising within him a stubborn will to endure, not to surrender. If his father was going to act like that, why, let him—

   "Where is your shot-pouch?" asked Mr. Edwards.

   Jim 

 Prev. P 13/60 next