pany with Crenshaw visited the numerous tracts of land which the
merchant owned; but though he professed delight with the country, he
was plainly in no haste to become committed to any one of the several
propositions Crenshaw was eager to submit. Later, and still in the guise
of a prospective purchaser, he met Bladen, who also dealt extensively
in land, and apparently if anything could have pleased him more than
the region about the Cross Roads it was the country adjacent to
Fayetteville.

From the first he had assiduously cultivated his acquaintance with
the new owners of the Barony. He was now on the best of terms with Nat
Ferris, and it was at the Barony that he lounged away his evenings,
gossiping and smoking with the planter on the wide veranda.

"The Barony would have suited me," he told Bladen one day. They had
just returned from an excursion into the country and were seated in the
lawyer's office.

"You say your father was a friend of the old general's?" said Bladen.

"Years ago, in the north--yes," answered Murrell.

"Odd, isn't it, the way he chose to spend the last years of his life,
shut off like that and seeing no one?"

Murrell regarded the lawyer in silence for a moment out of his deeply
sunk eyes.

"Too bad about the boy," he said at length slowly.

"How do you mean, Captain?" asked Bladen.

"I mean it's a pity he has no one except Yancy to look after him," said
Murrell, but Bladen showed no interest and Murrell went on. "Don't you
reckon he must have touched General Quintard's life mighty close at some
point?"

"Well, if so, it eluded me," said Bladen. "I went through General
Quintard's papers and they contained no clue to the boy's identity that
I could discover. Fact is, the general didn't leave much beyond an old
account-book or two; I imagine that before his death he destroyed the
bulk of his private papers; it looked as if he'd wished to break with
the past. His mind must have been affected."

"Has Yancy any legal claim on the boy?" inquired Murrell.

"No, certainly not; the boy was merely left with Yancy because Crenshaw
didn't know what else to do with him."

"Get possession of him, and if I don't buy land here I'll take him West
with me," said Murrell quietly. Bladen gave him a swift, shrewd glance,
but Murrell, smiling and easy, met it frankly. "Come," he said, "it's
a pity he should grow up wild in the pine woods--get him away
from Yancy--I am' willing to spend five hundred dol