ng into Gray's office at noon, the closed desk with its pile of
mail once more offended MacPherson's eye.

"Mr. Stoddard here?" inquired Hartley Sessions, glancing in at the same
moment.

"No, I think not," returned the Scotchman, unwilling to admit that he
did not exactly know. "I believe he's up at the club. Perhaps he's got
tangled in for a longer game of golf than he reckoned on."

This unintentional and wholly innocent falsehood stopped any inquiry
that there might have been. MacPherson had meant to 'phone the club
during the day, but he failed to do so, and it was not until evening
that he walked up himself to put more cautious inquiries.

"No, sah--no, sah, Mr. Gray ain't been here," the Negro steward told him
promptly. "I sure would have remembered, sah," in answer to a startled
inquiry from MacPherson. "Dey been havin' a big game on between Mr.
Charley Conroy and Mr. Hardwick, and de bofe of 'em spoke of Mr. Gray,
and said dey was expectin' him to play."

MacPherson came down the stone steps of the clubhouse, gravely
disquieted. Below him the road wound, a dimly conjectured, wavering gray
ribbon; on the other side of it the steep slope took off to a gulf of
inky shadow, where the great valley lay, hushed under the solemn stars,
silent, black, and shimmering with a myriad pulsating electric lights
which glowed like swarms of fireflies caught in an invisible net. That
was Watauga. The strings of brilliants that led from it were arc lights
at switch crossings where the great railway lines rayed out. Near at
hand was Cottonville with its vast bulks of lighted mills whose hum came
faintly up to him even at this distance. MacPherson stood uncertainly in
the middle of the road. Supper and bed were behind him. But he had not
the heart to turn back to either. Somewhere down in that abyss of night,
there was a clue--or there were many clues--to this strange absence of
Gray Stoddard. Perhaps Gray himself was there; and the Scotchman cursed
his own dilatoriness in waiting till darkness had covered the earth
before setting afoot inquiries.

He found himself hurrying and getting out of breath as he took his way
down the ridge and straight to Stoddard's cottage, only to find that the
master's horse was not in the stable, and the Negro boy who cared for it
had seen nothing of it or its rider since five o'clock that morning.

"I wonder, now, should I give the alarm to Hardwick," MacPherson said to
himself. "The lad may h