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He clambered down, leaving the speechless Ole sprawling on the wagon-seat. Back in his own wagon, he smiled broadly to himself.

“Strange, how easily the apple falls when it’s ripe,” he soliloquized.

They drove on clear to the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, obliterating everything else.

It was nearly noon when they reached the narrow fringe of trees and underbrush–deciduous and wind-tortured all–which bordered the big, muddy, low-lying Missouri; and soon they could hear the throb of the engine at the mill, and the swish of the saw through the green lumber; a sound that heard near by, inevitably carries the suggestion of scalpel and living flesh. Nothing but green timber was sawed thereabout in those days. The country was settling rapidly, lumber was imperative, and available timber very, very limited.

Returning, the heavy loads grumbled slowly along, so slowly that it was nearly evening, and their shadows preceded them by rods when they reached the little prairie town. They stopped to water their teams; and Ole, true to the instincts of his plebeian ancestry, went in search of a glass of beer. He returned, quickly, his face very red.

“A fellow in there is talking about–about Mrs. Maurice,” he blurted.

“In the saloon, Ole?”

The Swede repeated the story, watching the tall man from the corner of his eye.

A man, very drunk, was standing by the bar, and telling how, in coming to town, he had seen a buggy drive away from the Maurice home very fast. He had thought it was the doctor’s buggy and had stopped in to see if any one was sick.

The fellow had grinned here and drank some more, before finishing the story; the surrounding audience winking at each other meanwhile, and drinking in company.

Then he went on to tell how Camilla Maurice had sat just inside the doorway, her face in her hands, sobbing,–so hard she hadn’t noticed him; and–and–it wasn’t the doctor who had been there at all!

Ichabod had been holding a pail of water so that a horse might drink. At the end he motioned Ole very quietly, to take his place.

“Finish watering them, and–wait for me, please.”

It was far from what the Swede had expected; but he accepted the task, obediently.

The only saloon of the town stood almost exactly opposite Hans Becher’s place, flush with the street. A long, low building, communicating with the outer world by one door–sans glass–its single window in front and at the rear lit it but imperfectly at midday, and now at early evening made faces almost indistinguishable, and cast kindly shadow over the fly specks and smoke stains of a low roof. A narrow pine bar, redolent of tribute absorbed from innumerable passing “schooners,” stretched the entire length of the room at one side; and back of it, in shirt sleeves and stained apron, presided the typical bar-keeper of the frontier. All this Ichabod saw as he stepped inside; then, himself in shadow, he studied the group before him.

Railroad and cattle men, mostly, made up the gathering, with a scant sprinkling of farmers and others unclassified. A big, ill-dressed fellow was repeating the tale of scandal for the benefit of a newcomer; the narrative moving jerkily over hiccoughs, like hurdles.

“–I drew up to th’ house quick, an’ went up th’ path quiet like,”–he tapped thunderously on the bar with a heavy glass for silence–“quiet–sh-h–like; an’ when I come t’ th’ door, ther’ ‘t was open, an’–as I hope–hope t’ die,… drink on me, b’ys, aller y’–set ‘m up, Barney ol’ b’y, m’ treat,… hope t’ die, ther’ she sat, like this–” He looked around mistily for a chair, but none was convenient, and he slid flat to the floor in their midst, his face in his hands, blubbering dismally in imitation…. “Sat (hic) like this; rockin’ an’ moanin’ n’ callin’ his name: Asa–Asa–Asa–(hic) Arnold–‘shure ‘s I’m a sinner she–“