seman, bent from the saddle and engaged with the fastening. Cary rode
up. "Ned Hunter, is it you? Why, man, I have not seen you this long
while! Where have you been in hiding?"

"I have visited," answered Mr. Hunter, "New York and the Eastern Shore.
You are looking well, Cary; better than you did at Christmas. I was in
this quarter, and so I thought I would stop at Greenwood."

The two rode together up the hill, beneath the arching oaks. The
servants appeared, the horses were taken, and Cary and his guest entered
the quiet old house. A little later, in the drawing-room, over a blazing
fire and a bottle of wine, Mr. Hunter laid aside a somewhat quaint air
of injured dignity, and condescended to speak of Fontenoy and of how
very changed it was since the old days. "Nothing like so bright, sir,
nothing like so bright! I have not thought Miss Dandridge looking
cheerful for more than a year--and she used to be the gayest thing!
always smiling, and with something witty to say every time I came near!
I hate changes. This is good wine, Cary."

"Yes. I do not, on the whole, think Fontenoy so changed."

"Don't you? I do. Well, well, it is not the only place that has changed!
You've no sign yet, have you, Cary, of the murderer?"

"He still goes free."

"If there's a man in the county that I dislike," remarked Mr. Hunter,
"it is Lewis Rand. But if he had taken the river road that day as he
said he should, he and your brother might have travelled together, and
the two would have been a match for the damned gypsy, or whoever it was,
that shot Mr. Cary. Have you ever noticed what little things make all
the difference? Shall I pour for you, too?"

"_As he said he should._ How do you know that he said he should?"

"Why, he and I slept the night of the sixth of September at the Cross
Roads Inn--"

"Ah!"

"Yes, one gets strange housemates at an inn. Well, after supper I went
out on the porch and began calling to the dogs, and he was there sitting
on the steps in the dusk. The wind was blowing, and there were
fireflies, and the dogs were jumping up and down. 'Down, Rover!' said I,
'Down, Di! Down, Vixen!' And then Rand and I talked a bit, and I said to
him, 'The river road's bad, but it's much the shortest.'"

"What," demanded Cary, in a strained voice,--"what did he answer?"

"He answered, 'I shall take the river road.'"

Mr. Hunter helped himself to wine. "I was tired, and he was tired, and I
didn't like him anyway, and was