e--some of
them utter strangers to one another but bound by the same tie. But I'll
just whisper the address in your ear and you'll do well to remember it.
Heart o' Dreams Camp, Huddleston, Michigan; post-office, Calderville.
When the victim of your ready gun rises from his couch and strikes out
for the northwest you will not lose sight of him. If you do you'll
muddle everything. Your hand baggage has been planted safely with the
baggage master at the railway station at Tiffin, seven miles from where
we stand, and here's the check for it. Once more you shall renew your
acquaintance with scented soap. Observe my instructions strictly,
Archie; meet all difficulties with a confident spirit and you will
neither stumble nor fall. Good-by and God bless you!"

The Governor's blessing failed to dispel the gloom that settled upon Mr.
Archibald Bennett as he crept through the shed where the laborers were
housed and found his cot. It was a hot humid night, with the chirr of
queer insects outside mocking with weary iteration the lusty snores of
the weary farm hands. He might bolt, now that he had Isabel's address,
and suffer the Governor to manage in his own fashion the foolhardy
enterprises, of which he had spoken so lightly; but to do this would be
only to prove himself a deserter. The business of delivering Edith
Congdon into Isabel's hands was his affair as much as the Governor's.
And having twice had a taste of Isabel's anger his appetite was sated.
To win her applause he must appear before her a heroic figure, but the
part the Governor had assigned him was little calculated to develop his
chivalric qualities. He found himself warmly hating Putney Congdon. If
Congdon had only had the decency to die there would not be all this
bother, and in his bitterness he resolved that if he got another chance
he would make an end of him. Soothed by this decision he fell asleep.

IV

The morning opened auspiciously with a raking from Grubbs, who, finding
that the Governor had decamped, most ungenerously held Archie
responsible for his departure.

"I swear every year," he declared, "I'll never hire another tramp and
hereafter I'll let the crops rot before I'll have one on the place."

Archie replied with heat that he knew nothing about the Governor or the
reason for his precipitate passing. As the scolding the foreman had
given him the day before still rankled, he protested his ignorance of
the Governor and all his ways with a vigor st