e
pleasant. He seemed to have been so mixed up with this sad business about
Josiah that I kept away at last, so that I might keep my temper. Billy
drove him to the station after lunch."

"Indeed!" said Penhallow, pleased that Grey had gone. It was news to him
and not unwelcome. Ann would no doubt explain. "What put Grey on the
track of Josiah as a runaway? Was it a mere accidental encounter?" He
desired to get some confirmatory information.

"No--I suspect not." Then he related what Josiah had told him of Peter's
threats. "I may do that reprobate injustice, but--However, that is all I
now know or feel justified in suspecting."

"Well, come up and dine to-day; we can talk it out after dinner."

"With pleasure," said Rivers.

Penhallow moodily walking up the street, his head bent in thought, was
made aware that he was almost in collision with Swallow and a large man
with a look of good-humoured amusement and the wide-open eyes and uplift
of brow expressive of pleasure and surprise.

"By George, Woodburn!" said the Squire. "I heard some one of your name
was here, but did not connect the name with you. I last heard of you as
in a wild mix-up with the Sioux, and I wished I was with you." As
Penhallow spoke the two men shook hands, Swallow meanwhile standing apart
not over-pleased as through the narrowed lids of near-sight he saw that
the two men must have known one another well and even intimately, for
Woodburn replied, "Thought you knew I'd left the army, Jim. The last five
years I've been running my wife's plantation in Maryland."

The Squire's pleasure at his encounter with an old West Point comrade for
a moment caused him to forget that this was the master who had been set
on Josiah's track by Grey. It was but for a moment. Then he drew up his
soldierly figure and said coldly, "I am sorry that you are here on what
cannot be a very agreeable errand."

"Oh!" said Woodburn cheerfully, "I came to get my old servant, Caesar. It
seems to have been a fool's errand. He has slipped away. I suppose that
Grey as usual talked too freely. But how the deuce does it concern you? I
see that it does."

Penhallow laughed. "He was my barber."

"And mine," said Woodburn. "If you have missed him, Jim, for a few days,
I have missed him for three years and more." Then both men laughed
heartily at their inequality of loss.

"I cannot understand why this fellow ran away. He was a man I trusted and
indulged to such an extent that my