to give him the box
stall. I'll try him to-morrow morning, if the weather is good."

Brother Japheth's business was concluded, and the architect who was
building the latest extension to the pipe-pit floor was heading across
the yard to consult the young boss. Pettigrass paused with his foot in
the stirrup to say, "Old Tike Bryerson's on the rampage ag'in; folks up
at the valley head say he's a-lookin' for you, Tom-Jeff."

"For me?" said Tom; then he laughed easily. "I don't owe him anything,
and I'm not very hard to find. What's the matter?"

He thought it a little singular at the time that Japheth gave him a
curious look and mounted and rode away without answering his question.
But the building activities were clamoring for time and attention, and
his father was waiting to consult him about a run of iron that was not
quite up to the pipe-making test requirements. So he forgot Japheth's
half-accusing glance at parting, and the implied warning that had
preceded it, until an incident at the day's end reminded him of both.

The incident turned on the fact of his walking home. Ordinarily he
struck work when the furnace whistle blew, riding home with his father
behind old Longfellow; but on this particular evening Kinderling, the
architect, missed his South Tredegar train, and Tom spent an extra hour
with him, discussing further and future possibilities of expansion.
Kinderling got away on a later train, and Tom closed his office and took
the long mile up the pike afoot in the dusk of the autumn evening,
thinking pointedly of many things mechanical and industrial, and never
by any chance forereaching to the epoch-marking event that was awaiting
him at the Woodlawn gate.

His hand was upon the latch of the ornamental side wicket opening on the
home foot-path when a woman, crouching in the shadow of the great-gate
pillar, rose suddenly and stood before him. He did not recognize her at
first; it was nearly dark, and her head was snooded in a shawl. Then she
spoke, and he saw that it was Nancy Bryerson--a Nan sadly and terribly
changed, but with much of the wild-creature beauty of face and form
still remaining.

"You done forgot me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked; and then, at his start of
recognition: "I allow I have changed some."

"Surely I haven't forgotten you, Nan. But you took me by surprise; and I
can't see in the dark any better than most people. What are you doing
down here in the valley so late in the evening?" He tried