So the news had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the visitors. The widow’s gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.

“Don’t say a word about it, madam. There’s another that you’re more beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don’t allow me to tell his name. We wouldn’t have been there but for him.”

Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled the main matter — but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the widow said:

“I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that noise. Why didn’t