followed on, listening now and then to
the distant bark while pursued and the pursuer were going farther away.
He waited, knowing fox nature well and that there were a hundred chances
to one that the creature would come back near the spot from which it was
started. As he waited close by the road which here led through the
woods, two men passed along it without seeing him. They were talking as
they went. Stephen knew them; one was an old man who used to be a
servant in the family when Colonel Archdale was a boy. He had married
long ago and was now living in a little house not far from his old home.
The young man with him was his son. Stephen was in no mood even for a
passing word, and he stood still, perceiving that a clump of bushes hid
him. A few sentences of the conversation reached him through the
stillness, but it meant nothing to him; he was not conscious even of
listening until Katie's name caught his ear. They were talking of this
marriage then, as every body was; he was the gossip of the very
servants. But his attention once caught was held until the speakers
passed out of hearing. Surely they knew nothing about the matter that he
did not.

"She is such a pretty young lady," said the elder man, "and any girl
would feel it to miss the handsome young master for a husband."

"Um!" assented the son. "Well, I suppose she will miss the sight of him
if her heart is set upon him, but there is many a young man nicer to my
thinking, and not so proud in his ways."

"Has he ever been unjust or overbearing to you, Nathan?" inquired the
old man severely.

"Oh, no, he has been uncommonly civil, he would think it beneath him to
be anything else. I know the cut of him; if he had any spite he would
take it out on a gentleman. He thinks we are made of different clay from
him." And the embryo republican threw back his shoulders impatiently.

"So we are," returned the other, with the Englishman's ingrained belief
in caste; "but, to be sure, you feel it with some more than with others,
with the young man more than with his father. But I like it better than
the softly way the Colonel has. Stephen is more like his grandfather."

"His grandfather!" echoed the son. "Why, he was a--."

"Hush!" cried the other so suddenly and sharply that if the word had
been, uttered at all Stephen lost it, though, now he was listening
eagerly enough. "Do you remember you swore that you would never speak
that word?"

"Well," returned the young ma