"How is that? How did he act queerly?" asked Silas.
"I am not aware that I acted queerly at all," said Joseph doggedly.
He knew well enough he had acted queerly, and did not mean to deny that; but, as children and confused persons often do, he answered to the underlying motive rather than the language. He only thought of denying the inference of suspicion that her words seemed to him to suggest. But to Mrs. Kilgore he very naturally seemed to be prevaricating.
"Why, Joseph!" said she, in a raised voice, and with a slight asperity; "you know how you jumped up, looking like a ghost, the moment I opened the door, and the first thing you said after I 'd told you that they 'd found a murdered man in the barn, was—Why, Joseph, what's the matter?"
But I must go back a little. When the convers
