There's a telephone next door if you
want to call up the county clerk.'"
The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle.
"Did they marry?" he continued. "Did the duck swallow the June-bug?
And then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There's where you are
all wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a
hermit? One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say
women did it. How old is the old man now?" asked the speaker, turning
to Bildad Rose.
"I should say about sixty-five."
"All right. He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years. Say he
was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves
twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he
spend that ten and two fives? I'll give you my idea. Up for bigamy.
Say there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at
Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets
his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they
are through with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline.
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