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Show and bo r FAR: Jim Mac- anvthina i .. f.RT THIS FAR: Jim Mac r d n ins to mar-would mar-would live with Megan. M IrreK'" " " went 0Ut V . W be ! " the r,dl!e- urtlrd h. r a. he walked .f" lle,, neai me rock. She W;; and A.lr.a. and . .ell the farm. He Ulked W!!, wire h"w she "" ' ,00 " aead- she ' urn. The house was dark -M, L .he ".turned. She was W ,., ihe heard a found and lather', room. He had Ktrom ""u,er "wa"C'" "d Kauded Mei to to to bed. "Oh-no!" Megan said In a imall. choked whisper. Tom straightened. His face looked as though It had been carved out f Rfanite. "f course not It never hap-Pen.-d! I didn't say it 1 never even tnmk it. Forget It, will you?" said Tom in that harsh, strained voice. He took up the milk ai.d the basket or eggs and went swiftly out of the house. The sound of his footsteps Ml the old broken-brick walk were e most final sounds Megan had ever heard in all her life. She stood listening until the last one had died to silence, and then she leaned, weak and shaking, against the cabinet behind be-hind her and put her cold, trembling hands over her face. She became conscious of Annie's presence, when Annie said very Quietly, her old voice gentle and warm with tenderness, "Yo' paw done come, honey." w anything. I opened ,he doo she was lying there-all bloody-" Hg?Vreed her across e road and to the porch, where Annie stood watching and listening Megan was too shocked, too appalled ap-palled at what had happened, and too busy trying to soothe the hysterical hys-terical girl to realize that Annie's dark face was ashen, or that her eyes were wide and the white, showing to an unusual degree An-nies An-nies thick-lipped mouth was tightly folded and she said no word as Megan Me-gan and Betty reached the porch But Annie's hands were kind and gentle, and between them, she and Megan were able to get the girl into the house, away from that rapidly Increasing crowd across the road out of reach of voices that were sharpened with excitement and curiosity. cu-riosity. The day crept on somehow. Megan Me-gan and Annie turned Betty over to her family, and the house grew quiet. Neither Annie nor Megan was disposed to talk; Megan, because she was locked fast in her sick, shaken thoughts; Annie, for reasons CHAPTER X im ifter one o'clock, so she Kter father must be asleep Idressed In the dark and I bed. She felt little now of the violence of emo-h,d emo-h,d geI,t her flying from tothe Ridge; to the face ,( md heartache that Tom ith him twenty-four hours ,, ieven days a week, her ed trivial. , half asleep when she downstairs door open and itart up the stairs. There thing in the stealth, the I of his tread on the I the way he opened his jng it shut, that roused than noise would have io leldom bothered to be xmt noise. He walked use and up the stairs and door forcefully, no matter he came in; but tonight ipt io cautiously that she , and she slid out of t up her cotton crepe ki-itepped ki-itepped Into her bedroom She was too dazed to wonder how long Annie had been there, to wonder won-der how much of that taut little scene Annie had witnessed. Somehow Some-how that didn't matter at the moment. mo-ment. She only knew that she must accept Annie's words as a warning and pull herself together before she faced her father. He had gone directly to his room. She heard him moving around up there as she and Annie finished getting get-ting supper on the table. When he came down, he was freshly shaven and his shirt was Immaculate. He had bathed and shaved and changed before supper, as he had done ever since she could remember. It had been one of the things that, as a child, she had been proud of. When she had gone home to supper and to spend the night with some school friend, and the school friend's father fa-ther had come to the supper table, collarless, a stubble of beard on his tired face, still wearing the sweat-stained, sweat-stained, grimy clothes he had worn in the field, she had thought always of her father with pride, If not with affection. itened st hei father's door to she heard only a soft, round, he tapped and 1i that you, Father?" Ihe blazes did you think It e mapped at her. 1 afraid It might be a bur- for the love of what the aid a burglar want here? I tp over my paper down-id down-id tried to get upstairs with-fcg with-fcg you. Hi reafter, I'll see jou are awakened." There lething odd about his voice couldn't quite distinguish, led to te breathing hard, b he had been running or wring under some terrific nt. d bed!" he called to her md ihe turned and went her room. He came into the dining room, moving wearily, and when he had seated himself, he looked straight at her across the table and said sternly, "Yes, I know about it. We won't discuss It, If you don't mind." "Of course not," she answered, accepting ac-cepting the dish Annie offered her, and serving herself without in the least knowing what the food was. She managed to eat, without the faintest awareness of what she was eating. Her father was equally silent. He was pale and there were haggard circles beneath his eyes and his hands were not quite steady. And she did not know when the evil, staggering stag-gering thought began to creep slyly into her mind; when she began to remember the unusual stealth and caution with which he had let himself him-self into the house last night; the way he had climbed the stairs on tiptoe; the way his door had closed behind him. Suddenly the thought stood clear and hot in her mind: where had he been? Then othejs crowded close and looked in and Instantly stepped back as though they had received a blow. of her own that she had, at the moment, mo-ment, no intention of revealing. Megan was too self-absorbed to be aware of Annie's curious, furtive glances as they went like automatons automa-tons through their regular daily chores. Probably not a household in Pleasant Grove sat down to a midday meal; what food was consumed con-sumed was taken more or less on the run. So it did not occur either to Megan or to Annie to wonder when Jim MacTavish did not appear for the meal. 1 near noon the following I Megan was busy in her 1 border along the walk, re-lome re-lome clumps of phlox and out some of the other 1j that were taking too am for themselves, when a harp scream of terror rent Md, mild air. jerked to her feet as the ime again from the direc-Jlcia'i direc-Jlcia'i house, and now she rl whom she recognized as ndrlx, whose father owned come stumbling down the n Alicia's house, wringing If and screaming. In the world" somebody One of the men ran up the the house, stepping over the H whose contents had over the porch, and looked the half-open door of Aline. Ali-ne. I yell and stepped back, heri crowded close and OA Instantly stepped back P they had received a Tom, stopping on his way from school to pick up his daily supply of milk and eggs, paused for a moment mo-ment to say, distressed and unhappy. unhap-py. "It's a terrible thing. I can't help feeling terribly sorry for her alone there. She must have been terrified." Megan said, in a small, strangled voice, one hand at her throat "Oh don't!" "I'm sorry," Tom said compassionately. compas-sionately. "It must have been very unpleasant for you all day with that mob" She set her teeth hard to keep them from chattering, and locked her hands tightly in her lap. She no longer could go through the mechan- leal motions of putting food into herj mouth, of forcing herself to swallow, j while the evil thought crept through her mind. He had said, when she called to him through his closed! door, that he had fallen asleep over his paper in the living room; but: she had known that he was not tell-J ing the truth. For there had been no glimmer of light anywhere in the house when she had come In. When she had come inl It had been after one o'clock when she had come in. That mysterious grapevine by which a secret whispered whis-pered in the kitchen of a house at one end of town will reach the farthermost far-thermost house on the other side of town, in any small place like Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove, reported that the doctor doc-tor felt Mrs. Stevenson had been killed sometime between ten o'clock and midnightl And she, Megan MacTavish, had been on the Ridgu with another woman's husband from eleven o'clock until almost on! man who had reached the Logan, it was-pulled the land said sternly, "Mustn't o in there till the police Might mess up a clue or Somebody go call the what 1, if, mMVt nap. Bill, for Pete's sake" " Stuart, as usual one of the scone of any catas-' catas-' unusual event in Pleasant "I hated her and now she's dead and I'm so ashamed," Megan confessed con-fessed humbly. "I didn't even try to help her. Maybe If I had" "Oh, come now, for goodness' sake "' Tom protested. "You must not give way to such thoughts! You're on the verge of becoming morbid." "They sav it happened before midnight mid-night " Megan told him thickly. "Perhaps she - she might have screamed-perhaps If I'd been at home " Her voice broke and she was silent, her teeth sunk hard In her lower lip. her eyes sick and frightened, dark with horror. Tom came into the kitchen and cut his hand on her arm and gave her a little shake ' Stop that! he ordered sternly. "Even If you had been at home-even if you d been down here In the living room, you could not have heard her. And In your room upstairs at the back of ihe house-can-t you see how foolish Her father had come ln the house a bit later. The silent meal ended and she helped Annie clear the table. When Annie refused her help with the dishes, she went reluctantly Into the living room, where her father had already established himself with the weeklv newspaper, which he had read last nifcht. When she came into the room, he was sitting staring straight before him, his face white and still, his eyes bleak and frightened. Stevenson's been - mur- "'d Bill, swallowing hard "I little green. a stunned moment of Is then a little buzz ran e crowd, and the word Wa the only word that aistnguished in that buzz. Nj t Mlesticks, Bill Lo- read too many o' them JHm'" snapped Mrs. J"1'" her way forward, lent ', v'nson' got hurt-Tr hurt-Tr Get away from that T see. We ought to M hurt she is." I"'81'" Bill .aid grimly. Jrt saw the greenish Ww ,ace. ..Ain.t JJ that And the police ,8n to be the first ones to ' Ah"e there's been th l m starding right J cPs get here and there oir:K in till then." 81 the end of the B'ng the sobbing Betty ' was stammering, her k, hLWith S0b8' "l TOUgM Uth L alway do, and I t a j Stevenn can I when she didn't gay She came then and sat down in the chair opposite him, in front ol the small, cheerful fire, and took up her basket of mending. And then ghe saw that her father was watching watch-ing her covertly, out of the corners of his eyes, and that when she looked straight at him, his eyes dropped almost guiltily to the paper She put down the sewing basket. Her mouth was dry. her throat felt constricted with horror, and a creeping creep-ing fear bred of that slow, evil thought was spreading through her mind Suddenly, almost as though someone else spoke the words, she asked in a fearful whisper, "Father did you do it?" (TO BE CONTINUED) you're being, darlingr The little endearment slipped out. Yet the moment, the second, after It had been spoken It seemed to crash In both their ears with the sound of doom. His face went white and set and his eyes were tragic. Megan caught her breath and looked up at him, her eyes : wide nd dazed incredulous. There was a Jause between them that could have Ke a matter of seconds; y to each of them It teemed to .tretcn endlessly. Tom said, nil voice harsh and very low, "Yes. I .aid 'darhng -I have thought it often enough. |