's comin' home!"

Uncle Dick could not share the mother's delight. The lover's coming
could hardly avail anything toward saving the girl. Nevertheless, he
took the sheet of paper, which carried the message sent on by
telephone from North Wilkesboro' to Joines' store. He read it aloud,
that the marshal might hear:

Suffolk, Va.

Richard Siddon,
Joines' Mill, N. C.,
Via Telephone from North Wilkesboro'.
Arrive to-night with bloodhound.

Ezekiel.

Uncle Dick's voice faltered a little in the reading. The black eyes
were glowing with new hope beneath the beetling white brows, as he
lifted his gaze to the mountain peaks. For the first time, he felt a
thrill of jubilation over the young man whom he had rejected, whom now
he accepted--jubilation for the fresh, virile, strength of the lad,
for the resourcefulness that this message so plainly declared. The old
man's lips moved in vague, mute phrases, which were the clumsy
expressions of emotions, of gratitude to Providence for the blessing
of another's energy, on which to lean in this time of trial. There had
been desperate need of haste in getting the hounds on the trail. Now,
they were coming--to-night. Zeke was bringing them. Perhaps, after
all, an old man's declining years would know the fond tenderness of a
daughter's care--and a son's. Thank God that Zeke was coming!

CHAPTER XVII

Zeke, in his new life, found little leisure for loneliness, though
nightly he fell asleep with an ache of nostalgia in his heart, longing
for the mountains of home and the girl who dwelt among them. But his
days were filled with various activities that held his whole
attention. With a mind keen and apt to receive impressions, and hungry
for knowledge, he gave himself joyously to learning the details of
Sutton's tree-nail manufacture. The processes were, in fact, simple,
and he mastered them with ease. Then, he was instructed more broadly
in business methods, with the purpose of making him competent when he
should become a manager of the projected factory in the Blue Ridge
region. His time was thus so fully occupied that he had neither
opportunity nor inclination for social pleasures.

He spent a week-end in his employer's Long Island home, and surprised
that gentleman mightily by the propriety of his manners, which he had
acquired on th