“I think,” said Mr. Shrimplin, “we are going to see some weather.  Well, snow ain’t a bad thing.”  His dreamy eyes rested on Custer for an instant; they seemed to invite a question.

“No?” said Custer interrogatively.

“If I was going to murder a man, I don’t reckon I’d care to do it when there was snow on the ground.”

Mrs. Shrimplin here suggested cynically that perhaps he dreaded cold feet, but her husband ignored this.  To what he felt to be the commonplaceness of her outlook he had long since accustomed himself.  He merely said: 

“I suppose more criminals has been caught because they done their crimes when it was snowing than any other way.  Only chance a feller would have to get off without leaving tracks would be in a balloon; I don’t know as I ever heard of a murderer escaping in a balloon, but I reckon it could be done.”

He disliked to relinquish such an original idea, and the subject of murderers and balloons, with such ramifications as suggested themselves to his mind, occupied him until dinner-time.  He quitted the table to prepare for his night’s work, and at five o’clock backed wild Bill into the shafts of his high cart, lighted the hissing gasolene torch, and mounted to his seat.

“I expect he’ll want his head to-night; he’s got a game look,” he said to Custer, nodding toward Bill.  Then, as he tucked a horse blanket snugly about his legs, he added:  “It’s a caution the way he gets over the ground.  I never seen a horse that gets over the ground like Bill does.”

Which was probably true enough, for Bill employed every known gait.

“He’s a mighty well-broke horse!” agreed Custer in a tone of sincere conviction.

“He is.  He’s got more gaits than you can shake a stick at!” said Mr. Shrimplin.

Privately he labored under the delusion that Bill was dangerous; even years of singular rectitude on Bill’s part had failed to alter his original opinion on this one point, and he often told Custer that he would have felt lost with a horse just anybody could have driven, for while Bill might not and probably would not have suited most people, he suited him all right.

“Well, good-by, son,” said Mr. Shrimplin, slapping Bill with the lines.

Bill went out of the alley back of Mr. Shrimplin’s small barn, his head held high, and taking tremendous strides that somehow failed in their purpose if speed was the result desired.

Twilight deepened; the snow fell softly, silently, until it became a ghostly mist that hid the town—­hid the very houses on opposite sides of the street, and through this flurry Bill shuffled with unerring instinct, dragging Mr. Shrimplin from lamp-post to lamp-post, until presently down the street a long row of lights blazed red in the swirling smother of white.

Custer reentered the house.  The day held the sentiment of Sunday and this he found depressing.  He had also dined ambitiously, and this he found even more depressing.  He wondered vaguely, but with no large measure of hope, if there would be sledding in the morning.  Probably it would turn warm during the night; he knew how those things went.  From his seat by the stove he watched the hurrying flakes beyond the windows, and as he watched, the darkness came down imperceptibly until he ceased to see beyond the four walls of the room.