"
She looked at him in astonishment. Eighty years old, as lithe as a lad,
and with a lad's clear, laughing eye! Yet there was a look of power, of
that knowledge which is power, in his face that made her say to him:
"Do you think that Uncle Pros can ever be cured--have his right mind
back again, I mean? Of course, the cut on his head is healed up
long ago."
"The cut on his head didn't make him crazy," said her companion,
murmuringly. "Of course it wasn't that, or he would have been raving
when he came down from the mountain. Something happened to him
afterward."
"Yes, there did," Johnnie assented wonderingly--falteringly. "I don't
know how you came to guess it, but the woman who told me that she was
hiding in the front room when they were quarrelling and saw Uncle Pros
fall down the steps, says he landed almost square on his head. She
thought at first his neck was broken--that he was killed."
"Uh-huh," nodded the newcomer. "You see I'm a good guesser. I make my
living guessing things." He flung her a whimsical, sidelong glance, as,
having finished their lunch, they rose and moved on. "I wish I had my
hands on the processes of that atlas vertebra," he said.
"On--on what?" inquired Johnnie in a slightly startled tone.
"Never mind, sis'. If we find him, and I can handle him, I'll know where
to look."
"Nobody can touch him but me when he gets out this way," Johnnie said.
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