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PAINTED ROCK

"There'll be trouble over Mis' Habersham yet," said Keno Gedge, who knew the world, and had a wife who had been pretty enough to bring one man to the grave and two into a hospital before she quietened down in double harness. "She's a danger to this lonely society of bachelors, my son, and you can lay what you like on it. If I was Habersham I'd see she had no sort of conversation with Sam Weekes. Weekes ain't to be trusted with women, you can see that in his eye, if his record didn't prove it."

They said his record did prove it.

"Does Habersham know it?" I asked.

"Habersham don't know nothin'," said Gedge bitterly. "He knows enough about oranges to be froze out of Florida, and enough about windmills to set one up in my park that won't draw water."

Keno Gedge, according to Habersham, believed that a windmill created water in a dry well.

"We ain't on good terms over that dry windmill," said Gedge, "or I'd get Mis' Gedge to drop him a hint that Weekes is

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