"Look," said Mattie.

The bearded snare drummer was performing a queer antic. It was as if his
fingers were screwed into his hand and had become loosened while he
drummed. No, he was tightening them so they wouldn't fall off. One
finger after another he screwed up, and then went over them again to
make certain they were secure.

"I--knowed he'd come," Mattie said, happily.

"Um!... This here's kind of untoward. You keep your mouth shet, Mattie
Strong. Don't you go near that feller till I tell you. We don't want a
rumpus to spoil this here week."

"But he's here.... He's here."

"So's trouble," said Scattergood, succinctly.

The rest of that day Scattergood busied himself in searching out old
friends and neighbors of the Newtons. Nothing seemed to interest him
which happened later than eight years before, but no event of that
period was too slight or inconsequential to receive his attention and to
be filed away in his shrewd old brain. He was looking for the answer to
a question, and the answer was piled under the rubbish of eight years of
human activities--a hopeless quest to any but Scattergood.

Comedy and tragedy were alike interesting to him. Just as he lost no
detail of the old man's conduct when his boy disappeared, so he listened
and laughed when Martin Banks recalled to a group how Old Man Newton had