's stock could be utilized as a Farley asset. Pressed for
particular reasons, he turned it off lightly. A young man in the fever
of ante-nuptial expectancy was a mere pawn in the business game: let it
be over and done with, so that the nominal treasurer of Chiawassee
Limited could once more become the treasurer in fact.

Whereupon Vincent, who rode badly at best, bought a new saddle-horse
and took his place at Miss Dabney's whip-hand in the early morning
rides, the place formerly filled by Tom Gordon,--which was not the part
of wisdom, one would say. Contrasts are pitiless things; and the wary
woman-hunter will break new paths rather than traverse those already
broken by his rival.

Tom, meanwhile, had apparently relapsed into his former condition of
disinterest, and was once more spending his days on the mountain,
seemingly bent on effacing himself socially, as he had been effaced
business-wise by the Farley overturn.

A week or more after the relapse, as he was crossing the road leading
over the mountain's shoulder, he came on the morning riders walking
their horses toward Paradise, and saw trouble in Miss Dabney's eyes, and
on Farley's impassive face a mask of sullen anger.

When they were out of sight and hearing, Tom sat on a flat stone by the
roadside with his gun between his knees, thoughtfully speculative. Were
the high gods invoked in the midnight conference at the Marlboro
beginning to point the finger of fate at these two? He was malevolent
enough to hope so, and in the comfort of the hope, walked many miles
that day through the forests of crimson and gold showering with falling
leaves.

Whatever their influence in the field of sentiment, undeniably in that
of fact the high gods were imposing Sisyphean labors on Mr. Duxbury
Farley.

With the negotiations for the sale to the trust so abruptly terminated,
the promoter-president set instant and anxious inquiry afoot to
determine the cause. It was soon revealed; and when Mr. Farley found
that the pipe-pit patents had not been transferred with the Gordon
plant, and that Major Dabney had given Caleb Gordon a power of attorney
over Ardea's stock in the company, there were hard words said in the
town offices of Messrs. Trewhitt and Slocumb, Chiawassee attorneys, and
a torrent of persuasive ones poured into the Major's ear--the latter
pointing to the crying necessity for the revocation of the power of
attorney, summarily and at once.

The Major proved singula