"
"But where--when--did you see her?" asts
the doctor, mighty excited.
"I am coming to that. I went back home again.
And in July of the next year I heard from her."
"Heard from her?"
"By letter. She was in Galesburg, Illinois,
if you know where that is. She was living there
alone. And she was almost destitute. I wrote
her to come home. She would not. But she had
to live. I got rid of some of our property in Ten-
nessee, and took enough cash up there with me to
fix her, in a decent sort of way, for the rest of her
life, and put it in the bank. I was with her there for
ten days; then I went back home to get Aunt Lucy
Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her
to return. But when I got back North with Aunt
Lucy she had gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes, and when we returned without her to
Tennessee there was a letter telling us not to try to
find her. We thought--I thought--that she
might have taken up with you once again."
"But, my God! Tom," the doctor busts out,
"you were with her ten days there in Galesburg!
Didn't she tell you then--couldn't you tell from
the way she acted--that she had married
me?"
"That's the odd thing, Dave," says the colonel,
very slow and thoughtful. "That's what is so very
strange about it all. I merely assumed by my atti-
tude that you were not married, and she let me
assume it without a protest.
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