ove remained at Robin's Inn that night, and after the men had
gone he recalled a circumstance that was like a flash of lightning
in the dark of his great mystery.

Once at the Sign of the Dial his friend, the tinker, had shown him
a pair of new boots. He remembered they were of the same size and
shape as those he wore.

"We could wear the same boots," he had remarked to Darrel.

"Had I to do such penance I should be damned," the tinker had
answered. "Look, boy, mine are the larger by far. There's a man
coming to see me at the Christmas time--a man o' busy feet. That
pair in your hands I bought for him."

"Day before yesterday," said Tunk, that evening, "I was up in the
sugar-bush after a bit o' hickory, an' I see a man there, an' I
didn't have no idee who 'twas. He was tall and had white hair an'
whiskers an' a short blue coat. When I first see him he was
settin' on a log, but 'fore I come nigh he got up an' made off."

Although meagre, the description was sufficient. Trove had no
longer any doubt of this--that the stranger he had seen at Darrel's
had been hiding in the bush that day whose events were now so
important.

Whoever had brought the money, he must have known much of the plans
and habits of the young man, and, the night before Trove's arrival
at Robin's Inn, he came, probably, to the sugar woods, where he
spent the next day in hiding.

The young man was deeply troubled. Polly and her mother sat well
into the night with him, hearing the story of his life, which he
told in full, saving only the sin of his father. Of that he had
neither the right nor the heart to tell.

"God only knows what is the next chapter," said he, at last. "It
may rob me of all that I love in this world."

"But not of me," said Polly, whispering in his ear.

"I wish I were sure of that," he answered.

XXVI

The Coming of the Cars

That year was one of much reckoning there in the land of the hills.
A year it was of historic change and popular excitement. To begin
with, a certain rich man bought a heavy cannon, which had roared at
the British on the frontier in 1812, and gave it to the town of
Hillsborough. It was no sooner dumped on the edge of the little
park than it became a target of criticism. The people were to be
taxed for the expense of mounting it--"Taxed fer a thing we ain't
no more need of than a bear has need of a hair-brush," said one
citizen. Those Yankees came of men who helped to fling th