There was a subdued murmur of assent, the door was closed, and Uncle Jabez returned to the thread of his discourse: 

“Lemme see:  where was I?  Oh, yes.  You may think it a little strange, now, but I didn’t neither see nor hear tell of her for a full six months.  If I was makin’ this story up, and anxious to make a good story of it, you can see, if you’re fair-minded, that I’d say she came back right away.  Now, wouldn’t I be most likely to?  Say?”

He appealed so directly to Mr. Birchard, pausing for a reply, that the sceptic was obliged to answer in some way, and, with a curious sort of reluctance, he said slowly, “Yes—­I suppose—­I’m sure you would.”

This seemed to satisfy Uncle Jabez, and he went on with his story: 

“I came home from town one stormy night, about six months after she died, pretty well beat out,—­entirely so, I may say.  I’d been drivin’ some cattle into the city, and I’d had only a poor concern of a boy to help me.  The cattle was contrai-ry,—­contrai-rier’n common; and I remember thinkin’, when the feller at the drove-yard handed me my check, that I’d earned it pretty hard.  That’s the last about it I do remember.  I s’pose I must ‘a’ put it in my pocket-book, the same as usual; but I rode home in a sort of a maze, I was so tired and drowsy, and I’d barely sense enough to eat my supper and grease my boots afore I went to bed.  I had a bill to pay the next day, and I opened my pocket-book, quite confident, to take out the check.  It wasn’t there.  I always kep’ a number of papers in that pocket-book, and I thought at fust it had got mislaid among ’em:  so I turned everything out, and unfolded ’em one by one, and poked my finger through a hole between the leather and the linin’, and made it a good deal bigger,—­but that’s neither here nor there,—­and before I was through I was certain sure of one thing,—–­ that wherever else that check was, it wasn’t in that pocket-book.  Then I tried my pockets, one after the other,—­four in my coat, four in my overcoat, three in my vest, two in my pants:  no, it wasn’t in any of them, and I begun to feel pretty queer, I can tell you.  It was my only sale of cattle for the season; I was dependin’ on it to pay a bill and buy one or two things for Gracie; and, anyhow, it’s no fun to lose a hunderd-dollar check and feel as if it must have been bewitched away from you.  I rode back to the drove-yard, though I wasn’t more’n half rested from the day before, and they said they’d stop payment on the check and give me a chance to look right good for it, and if I couldn’t find it they’d draw me another.  You see, they knowed me right well, and they wasn’t afraid I was tryin’ to play any sort of a game on ’em.  Still, it wasn’t a pleasant thing to have happen, for, say the best you could of it, it argued that I’d lost a considerable share of my wits.  So, when I come home, I felt so kind of worried and down-hearted that I couldn’t half eat my supper; and that