We found that wagon hitched above your lane, Sim.

Your mail box was busted down.

There wasn't no Big Aleck around, nor no one else." "Not no one else ?--_No one in the house_ ?" "Nels said there wasn't." "Light down, Sim," said Wid.

"Let's go in and talk to Pop Bentley." Pop Bentley, the keeper of the meager grocery store and little-used post-office, met them with gravity on his whiskered face.

He was a tall and thin man, much stooped, who, as far as the memory of man, had always lived here in Two-Forks Valley.
"Well, you heard the news, I reckon," said he to his neighbors.