being faint. Oh, I will tell you what I will do. You haven't
got your medicine-case with you, have you?"

"No, I started so hurriedly."

"Well, I will go in the office way. I know where Uncle Tom keeps
brandy, and I will be so chilled that I'll have to take a little before
mother sees me. That will make me all right. I wouldn't take it for
myself, but I will for her."

"And you are chilled, all right," said James.

"Yes, I think I am," said Clemency. "I did not think of it, but I guess
it was cold there in the woods keeping still so long." Indeed, the girl
was shaking from head to foot, both with cold and nervous terror. "It
was awful," she said in a little whisper.

James felt the girl shaking from head to foot. Suddenly a great
tenderness for the poor, little hunted thing came over him. He put his
arm around her. "Poor little soul," he said. "It must have been terrible
for you lying out there in the cold and dark and not knowing--"

Clemency shrank into his embrace as a hurt child might have done. "It
was perfectly terrible," she said, with a little sob. "I didn't know but
he might come back any minute and find me."

"It is all over now," James said soothingly.

"Yes, for the time," Clemency replied with a little note of despair in
her voice, "but there is something about it all that I don't understand.
Only think how long I have had to stay in the house, and he must have
been on the watch. I don't know when it is ever going to end."

"I think that I will end it to-morrow," said James with fierce
resolution.

"You? How?"

"I am going to put a stop to this. If an innocent girl can't step out of
the house for weeks at a time without being hounded this way, it is high
time something was done. I am going to get a posse of men and scour the
country for the scoundrel."

"Oh, will you do that?"

"Yes, I will. It is high time somebody did something."

"You saw him. You know just how he looks?"

"I could tell him from a thousand."

Clemency drew a long breath. "Well," she said doubtfully, "if you can,
but--"

"But what?"

"Nothing, only somehow I doubt if Uncle Tom will think it advisable.
There must be some mystery about all this or Uncle Tom himself would
have done that very thing at first. I don't understand it. But I don't
believe Uncle Tom will consent to your hunting for the man. I think for
some reason he wants it kept secret." Suddenly, Clemency gave a
passionate little outcry. "Oh, how I do ha