You know how them pines over on that far mountain-side always seem to be climbin' up, up, up, over each other's heads to the very top?
Well, Mr.Key, I SAW 'EM climbin'! And when I pulled myself together and got back to the mill, everything was quiet; and, by G--d, so was the mill-wheel, and there wasn't two inches of water in the river!" "And what did you think of it ?" said Key, interested in spite of his impatience.
"I thought, Mr.Key-- No! I mustn't say I thought, for I knowed it.

I knowed that suthin' had happened to my wife!" Key did not smile, but even felt a faint superstitious thrill as he gazed at him.

After a pause Collinson resumed: "I heard a month after that she had died about that time o' yaller fever in Texas with the party she was comin' with.

Her folks wrote that they died like flies, and wuz all buried together, unbeknownst and promiscuous, and thar wasn't no remains.

She slipped away from me like that bluff over that canyon, and that was the end of it." "But she might have escaped," said Key quickly, forgetting himself in his eagerness.
But Collinson only shook his head.