was rising. "I shall leave you to
the veteran--if he does not object."

She was moving away.

"Then I shall have to go with you," said the stranger calmly, "if the
veteran doesn't object. He knows a woman should not go unattended
around the valley. He'd rather see me doing my duty than having a
sociable pipe with him and hearing about the war. How about it, Hope?"

He did not stop to hear my answer. Had he waited a moment instead of
striding after the girl, with his dog at his heels, he might have seen
my reply.

[Illustration: He did not stop to hear my answer.]

I raised my pipe above my head and hurled it against the fence, where
it crashed into a score of pieces.

V

"Who is Robert Weston?" I asked of Tim.

"If you can answer that question Theophilus Jones will give you a
cigar," replied my brother. "He has tried to find out; he has
cross-questioned every man, woman, and child that comes to his store,
and he admits that he is beaten."

"When Theop can't find out, the mystery is impenetrable." I recalled
our suave storekeeper and his gentle way of drawing from his customers
their life secrets as he leaned blandly over the counter with his sole
thought apparently to do their commands. Theophilus had known that I
was going to enlist long before I had made up my own mind. He had told
Tim that I was coming home before he had handed him the postal card on
which I had scrawled a few lines announcing my return. So when I heard
that Weston was still a puzzle to him I knew that Six Stars had a
mystery. For Six Stars to have a mystery is unusual. Occasionally we
are troubled with ghosts and such supernatural demonstrations, which
cause us to keep at home at night, but we soon forget these things if
we do not solve them. But for our village to number among its people a
man whose whole history and whose family history was not known was
unheard of. For such a man to be here six weeks and not enlighten us
was hardly to be dreamed of. Robert Weston had dared it. Even Tim
regarded the matter as serious.

"It is suspicious," he said, shaking his head gravely.

He was cleaning up the supper dishes at the end of the table opposite
me. By virtue of my recent return I had not fallen altogether into our
household ways as yet, and sat smoking and watching him.

"It's mighty odd," he went on. "At noon one day, about six weeks ago,
Weston rode up to the tavern on a bicycle and told Elmer Spiker he was