s affair.

Two days later the Farleys came home, and since Vincent went promptly
into residence at Crestcliffe, the evenings with Norman were
interrupted. But they had served their purpose; and when Vincent began
to press for the naming of an early day in September for the wedding,
Ardea found it quite feasible to be calmly indefinite. You see, she had
still to tell him that it had become purely a matter of promise-keeping
with her--a task easy only for the heartless.

It was in the third week in August, a full month, earlier than their
original plans contemplated, that the Dabneys returned to Paradise and
Deer Trace. Miss Euphrasia was led to believe that the Major had tired
of the hotel and the mountain; and the Major thought the suggestion came
first from Miss Euphrasia.

But the real reason for the sudden return lay in a brief note signed
"Norman," and conveyed privately to Ardea's hands by a grimy-faced boy
from the foundry.

"Mr. Tom was waylaid by two footpads at the Woodlawn gates Saturday
night and half killed," it read. "He is delirious and asks continually
for you. Could you come?"

XXXI

THE NET OF THE FOWLER

Which of the Cynic Fathers was it who defined virtue as an attitude of
the mind toward externals? One may not always recall a pat quotation on
the spur of the moment, but it sounds like Demonax or another of the
later school, when the philosophy of cynicism had sunk to the level of a
sneer at poor human nature.

To say that Mr. Duxbury Farley, returning to find Chiawassee
Consolidated in some sense at the mercy of the new pipe plant, regarded
himself as a benefactor whose confidence had been grossly abused, is
only to take him at his word. What, pray tell us, was Caleb Gordon in
the crude beginning of things?--a village blacksmith or little more,
dabbling childishly in the back-wash of the great wave of industry and
living poverty-stricken between four log walls. To whom did he owe the
brick mansion on the Woodlawn knoll, the comforts and luxuries of
civilized life, the higher education of his son?

In Mr. Farley's Index Anathema, ingratitude ranked with crime. He had
trusted these Gordons, and in return they had despoiled him; crippled a
great and growing industry by segregating the profitable half of it;
cast doubt on the good name of its founder by reversing his business
methods. Chiawassee had been making iron by the hundreds of tons: where
were the profits? The query answered i