ia
anxiously. "Tell him, just as you have told me, how long you and John
have been engaged, and how devoted she was to you before she came down
to the mill. You appeal to him that way. You can overtake him--I mean
you can intercept him--if you start right on now--cut across the turn,
and go through the tunnel."

"If I go after him to talk to him, and we--uh--we have an
interruption--are you going to tell everybody you see about it?"
demanded Shade sharply, staring down at the woman.

She crouched a little, still clinging to the pickets of the gate. The
word "interruption" only conveyed to her mind the suggestion that they
might be interfered with in their conversation. She did not recollect
the mountain use of it to describe a quarrel, an outbreak, or an affray.

"No," she whispered. "Oh, certainly not--I'll never tell anything that
you don't want me to."

"All right," returned Buckheath hardily. "If you won't, I won't. If you
name to people that I was the last one saw with Mr. Stoddard, I shall
have obliged to tell 'em of what you and me was talkin' about when he
passed us. You see that, don't you?"

She nodded silently, her frightened eyes on his face; and without
another word he set off at that long, swinging pace which belongs to his
people. Lydia turned and ran swiftly into the house, and up the stairs
to her own room.

CHAPTER XX

MISSING

When Stoddard did not come to his desk that morning the matter remained
for a time unnoticed, except by McPherson, who fretted a bit at so
unusual a happening. Truth to tell, the old Scotchman had dreaded having
this rich young man for an associate, and had put a rod in pickle for
his chastisement. When Stoddard turned out to be a regular worker,
punctual, amenable to discipline, he congratulated himself, and praised
his assistant, but warily. Now came the first delinquency, and in his
heart he cared more that Stoddard should absent himself without notice
than for the pile of letters lying untouched.

"Dave," he finally said to the yellow office boy, "I wish you'd 'phone
to Mr. Stoddard's place and see when he'll be down."

Dave came back with the information that Mr. Stoddard was not at the
house; he had left for an early-morning ride, and not returned to his
breakfast.

"He'll just about have stopped up at the Country Club for a snack,"
MacPherson muttered to himself. "I wonder who or what he found there
attractive enough to keep him from his work."

Looki