Opposite to the smoking ruin
of the rectory he halted. He muttered, "I've got even with him anyhow!"

As he murmured his satisfaction, a man left on guard crossed the road.
"Halloa! Where are you bound, Peter?"

"Goin' after a job. Bad fire, wasn't it--hard on the preacher!"

"Hard. He's well lodged at the Squire's, and I do hear it was insured.
Nobody's much the worse, and it will make a fine bit of work for some of
us. Who done it, I wonder?"

"How should I know! Good-night."

When out of sight, he turned and said, "I ain't got even yet. Them rich
people's hard to beat. Damn the Squire! I'll get even with him some day."
He was bitterly disappointed. "Gosh! I ran that nigger out, and now I'm a
runaway too. It's queer."

At Westways Crossing he waited until an empty freight train was switched
off to let the night express go by. Then he stowed himself away in an
open box-car and had a comfortable sense of relief as it rolled eastward.
He felt sure that the Squire's last words meant that he might be arrested
and that immediate flight was his only chance of escape.

He thus passes, like Josiah, for some years out of my story. He had
money, was when sober a clever carpenter, and felt, therefore, no fear of
his future. He had the shrewd conviction that the Squire at least would
not be displeased to get rid of him, and would not be very eager to have
him pursued.

James Penhallow was disagreeably aware that it was his duty to bring
about the punishment of his drunken foster-brother, but he did not like
it. When the next morning he was about to mount his horse, he saw Mrs.
Lamb, now an aged woman, coming slowly up the avenue. As she came to the
steps of the porch, Penhallow went to meet her, giving the help of his
hand.

"Good-morning, Ellen," he said, "what brings you here over the snow this
frosty day? Do you want to see Mrs. Penhallow?"

For a moment she was too breathless to answer. The withered leanness of
the weary old face moved in an effort to speak, but was defeated by
emotion. She gasped, "Let me set down."

He led her into the hall and gave her a chair. Then he called his wife
from her library-room. Ann at once knew that something more than the
effect of exertion was to be read in the moving face. The dull grey eyes
of age stared at James Penhallow and then at her, and again at him, as in
the vigour of perfect health they looked down at his old nurse and with
kindly patience waited. "Don't hurry, Ellen