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Show unci be r h- mi JLova Peggy Eefim W.N.U. RELEASE Megan slipped away to offer her services to Annie in finishing up supper, sup-per, but Annie said, "No'm, honey, I's got eve'ything undeh control y'all go out and git yo'se'f a li'l bits o' fresh air, 'fo' suppeh." And gratefully, Megan obeyed her. It was already dusk, though not yet dark enough to obscure the vision. She crossed the backyard to a big old rough bench beneath a live oak tree and sat down, her head back, breathing deep of the crisp night air. The night was very still, save for the faint shouts of children playing somewhere along the highway; behind be-hind her in the barn she heard the rustling of the cows as they settled themselves down for the night. The whole scene was quiet and calm and peaceful. So peaceful that it was hard to believe the horror and tragedy trag-edy and terror that had gripped the place so short a time before. She couldn't bear to think of Tom any more. She wouldn't let herself. THE STORY THUS FAR: Martha con-tinned con-tinned th story of bow she bad awakened awak-ened to find Letty standing over her bed Tith the knife In hind. She and Tom had taken the knife away from Letty, and Martha had gone to the graveyard to bnry it while Tom watched over his sick wife. "I hid it where you found it." A little later. Letty suffered a hemorrhage. "She died early this morning." Bob Reynolds pressed her further. "I did Hi" Martha screamed. "I killed her. I hated her. Sbe spread stories about Tom and Miss MacTavish." Martha then went Into detaU of how she went to Alicia's house and waited for her chance, waited until Jim MacTavish left Alicia and then committed the murder. CHAPTER XVI "There's a short cut through the woods, and it isn't far. I got my sister to bed and to sleep. As I've already told you, Tom was out of the house. I found Mrs. Stevenson was not alone. I waited " "She wasn't alone?" Bob jerked her up sharply. Miss Martha shook her head. "Mr. MacTavish, was with her," she said, and now Megan held her breath and her teeth were clenched. "He left a few minutes after I got there. They had been quarreling. I could only hear a word or two, but I could telL just looking in at the window, that Mr. MacTavish was very angry and that Mrs. Stevenson was laughing at him." Megan could see the picture as though she herself had stood outside that window, and it made her shudder. shud-der. Yet .here was the thing that had worried her father an alibi. She drew a breath of sharp relief. "I waited until he had gone," Miss Martha went on wearily. "Then I knocked and she opened the door. She was surprised to see me, and not very pleasant. I tried to tell her why I had come, but she only laughed. She said that there must be a lot of truth in the stories about Tom and Miss MacTavish or he and I would not have been so alarmed and she added that she knew that Letty was out of her mind and that she was a menace to the neighborhood. neigh-borhood. She said she intended to start a movement to have her committed" com-mitted" Her voice broke, and after aft-er a superhuman effort at control, she said thinly, "And so I killed her." It was once more Bob who broke the tense, breathless pause. He still sat on the corner of the desk, and he scrubbed out the glowing tip of his cigarette as he spoke, his eyes on the crushed cigarette in the old glass ashtray, his voice very quiet and gentle, "The truth is, Miss Evans, that you spoke to Mrs. Stevenson, Ste-venson, and she answered you about as you have said. You did not kill her but when you turned to leave the house, you were astounded to see your sister in the doorway behind you, and realized that she had followed fol-lowed you. And it was, in reality, your sister, not you, who killed Mrs. Stevenson." Bob sighed. He ran his hands through his hair and stood up, white and tired, haggard almost, as though the long scene had been almost as much of an ordeal for him as for the broken, suddenly old woman before be-fore them. "But how could you possibly know " Megan demanded of Bob. It was late in the afternoon of an extremely hectic day after all the loose ends and the final details of the tragic story had been cleared up.' Miss Martha and Tom had departed de-parted on their sad errand of "taking "tak-ing Letty home" to lay beside the little son who had never lived. Megan had asked Bob and Laurence Lau-rence to stay for supper and they had accepted gratefully. And now they were in the living room, with Jim listening and looking on, withdrawn with-drawn and pale, but genial and pleasant when spoken to. "I didn't know, of course,"; Bob answered frankly. "It was just that well, call it a hunch, what you will. Only I kept hearing something in Miss Martha's words that didn't quite ring true. What she was saying say-ing would be completely sincere and cqnvincing. Then something would creep into the story, nothing I could set my finger on, but it was there and I could sense it Especially that very elaborate ruse of hiding the knife. If it had really been a knife out of the kitchen of her own home, she might have hidden it very carefully care-fully about the house. But to get herself up like a particularly terrifying terri-fying ghost and go sneaking out into the night to hide it in the one place she felt sure would never be found well, that had me puzzled." "I thought of that, too, of course, ' Laurence contributed. "Then when she began to talk about going to Mrs. Stevenson's remember h mentioned the short cut through the woods? Yet she had been at some pains to assure us that her sister's strength was not efficient for her to walk to the Stevenson Ste-venson place. But if there was a short cut through the woods, and if her sister, in one of her periods of lucidity, had followed her and overheard over-heard her quarrel with the Stevenson Steven-son woman, and the sister had been frightened, excited, as she most certainly cer-tainly would have been do you see? The pattern is the sister doing the deed not Miss Martha. I saw it suddenly, and well, you know what happened." were cold and hard as he followed her across the yard to the kitchen and into the dining room. Healthily tired at the end of the day, sleeping soundly at night, Megan Me-gan discovered, as week followed week, that the memory of those dark, evil days when Alicia Stevenson's Steven-son's malicious tongue had wagged so freely, was growing fainter. And she realized that Pleasant Grove, as a community, was also recovering from the darkness when Alicia's tongue had set old friends to eyeing each other with more or less veiled suspicion. Other farm families were finding release from dark memories in the ever new, yet age-old miracle of the dark earth, the tiny seeds, the new, tender green sprouts that meant life and hope and the future. She was touched and grateful to Jim for his honest, if bungling, attempts at-tempts to, help her. She tried not to let him know that his hands were clumsy with the delicate, fragile plants that he tried to pack. She knew he was bored, and that he resented the hard, back-breaking labor la-bor that it takes to run a farm effectively. ef-fectively. He came back from Meadersville late one afternoon, his eyes shining with excitement, obviously with news that he considered of great importance. It was already dusk, and the darkness dark-ness had driven Megan in from the fields. She had shed her earth-stained earth-stained dungarees, had a shower and was dressed for supper, busy in the kitchen helping Annie with the last duties of getting the meal on the table, when Jim came hurrying in. "The most marvelous thing has happened, Meggie I've been offered a splendid opportunity!" "Tell me," said Mqgan, eager and interested, loving him for the understanding under-standing she had acquired of him since his moment of self-revelation after Alicia's death. "Well, you know the county newspaper news-paper in Meadersville? The Sentinel?" Senti-nel?" demanded Jim, as eager and excited as a boy. "Dick Morgan publishes pub-lishes it. Well, Dick's been drafted and he wants me to take over until he comes back!" He beamed at her happily and Megan said quickly, "It is wonderful, wonder-ful, Dad but well, you've never had any newspaper experience do you think " Jim looked a little sulky. "Oh, I know that, but after all, Dick feels that I have other qualifications," qualifi-cations," he pointed out. "And Mrs. Morgan will stay on as business manager and write the woman's page and all that. What I'll have to do is write the editorials, and what news I can pick up. Mostly, right now, it comes from a wire service, because about the only two things people are interested in are the war and politics. And there's a fellow in Washington who acts as correspondent for a lot of county newspapers, Dick's paper among them. And Dick's got three weeks before he reports for induction and he feels that in that length of time he can get me settled in, help me to learn the ropes and all that. Of course, the salary Is really laughable laugh-able but I get a share of the profits prof-its and all that." "It is wonderful. Dad, and of course you can do it!" Megan assured as-sured him, sincerely. "I'm terribly proud of you." Jim looked at her oddly and then he asked, almost curiously: "Are you, Megan? Funny I can't remember when anybody ever said they were proud of me." Megan felt a little quick mist of tears in her eyes, but she knew this was no time for the display of pity that she felt for his humility his tacit admission that he had always hungered for appreciation, even while he had admitted to himself that he deserved no such appreciation. apprecia-tion. "But of course I'm proud of you, Dad now you'U get to make use of all that study and research you have done these last few years!" she told him happily. "I'U bet there isn't another an-other man in the whole county who has read as much, or studied as much, of current events as you have." Then he said hesitantly, "Of course, Meggie, I know I promised to help you with the farm this year but I hate to turn down a chance like this. A chance to well, to be somebody important, and to have people listen to my views." "Now don't you worry about the farm, or me," Megan assured hlra firmly. Jim beamed at her happily, obviously ob-viously relieved. He would ride to and from Meadersville each day with three men from Pleasant Grove who "commuted" U Meadersville offices. The paper came off the press every Friday. It might be necessary for him to stay over la town Thursday night, but the hotel wasn't bad and he could stay there. He had his plana made. Megan, listening to him while she did the mending that always occupied occu-pied her sizeble work basket, thought that be seemed younger and more vividly alive than he had been In a long time, and was deeply and selfishly self-ishly glad that he had found a job that be felt was worthy of his ability. tTO BE CONTINUED) The glimmer of her light-colored frock through the dusk led him to her. and she was glad when she saw Laurence coming towards her across the dusky dooryard. The glimmer of her light-colored frock through the dusk led him to her. He called her name uncertainly, uncertain-ly, and when she answered him he came on to her, something dark in his hands. "Your scarf," he said. "Annie felt you might catch cold out here she said supper would be. ready in ten or fifteen minutes." Megan started to rise, but he put his hand on her shoulder and pressed her back on the bench. Megan relaxed a little. He lit a cigarette and they sat for a little companionably in silence. "It's all like a terrible dream," she said huskily, and Laurence nodded. nod-ded. "But you've waked up now, Megan, Me-gan, and sensible people don't brood over bad dreams or let them affect their future lives!" he reminded her almost sternly. "There is one thing out of the bad dream that you can remember, though Fallon is free. After a decent interval of time" She shivered and said impulsively, impulsive-ly, "i don't feel I could ever bear to see him again." Laurence turned on her sharply, angrily. "Now you're talking like a fool!" he told her violently. "Just because a man has gone through hell and a hell that was no fault of his own no woman with a decent instinct to her name can throw hm aside!" Megan caught her breath and looked at him in surprise. "I didn't mean that after all, aren't you taking rather a lot for granted?" she protested heatedly. "Tom Fallon and I were friends" "Tom Fallon was and is in love with you, and you know it," Laurence Lau-rence told her bluntly. "Even if I hadn't known it, the way he looked at you when he said good-by and besides, have you forgotten that you told me yourself you were In love with him?" "I I guess I am," she admitted humbly. "You guess you are!" Laurence was caustic. "Well, what I meant was I'm all mixed up and confused It's been so horrible " she stammered faintly. "That's understandable " Laurence Lau-rence conceded grudgingly. "But after a while, you'U pull yourself together to-gether and be able to see clearly and in a year or so " Annie's voice from the kitchen door, that spilled an oblong of golden-amber light into the backyard, was the most welcome sound Megan had ever heard In all her life, and she rose so swiftly that Laurence's mouth tightened a Little and his eyes |