ssing harder than
ever," he said, lowering his voice. "Since the night when the office
burned he's been miles beyond me. While the carpenters were knocking
together the shack we're in now, he put in the time wandering around the
plant and looking as if he had lost something and forgotten what it was.
Now that we've got into the new office, he shuts himself up for hours on
end; won't see anybody--won't talk--scamps his meals half the time, and
has actually got old Captain Caleb scared stiff."

"How singular!" said Ardea; but in her heart there was a great pity.
"Do you suppose it was his loss in the fire?" she asked.

The manager shook his head.

"No; that was next to nothing, and we're doing a good business. It was
something else; something that happened about the same time. If I can't
find out what it is, I'll have to quit. He's freezing me out."

Ardea was inconsistent enough to oppose the alternative.

"No," she objected. "You mustn't do that, Mr. Norman. It is a friend's
part to stand by at such times, don't you think?"

"Oh, I'm willing," was the generous reply. "Only I'm a little lonesome;
that's all."

At another time Norman told her of the mysterious walking delegate, who
was admitted to the private office when an anxious and zealous business
manager was excluded. Later still, he made a half-confidence. Caleb, in
despair at the latest transformation in his son, had finally unfolded
his doubts and fears, business-wise, to the manager. The Farleys were
returning; a legal notice of a called meeting of the Chiawassee
Consolidated had been published; and it was evident that Colonel Duxbury
meant to take hold with his hands. And Tom seemed to have forgotten that
there was a battle to be fought.

Norman's recounting of this to Miss Dabney was the merest unburdening of
an overloaded soul, and he was careful to garble it so that the
prospective daughter-in-law of Colonel Duxbury might not be hurt. But
Ardea read between the lines. Could it be possible that Tom's lifelong
enmity for the Farleys, father and son, had even a little justification
in fact? She put the thought away, resolutely setting herself the task
of disbelieving. Yet, in the conversation which followed, Mr. Frederic
Norman was very thoroughly cross-questioned without his suspecting it.
Ardea meant to cultivate the open mind, and she did not dream that it
was the newly-discovered love which was prompting her to master the
intricacies of the busines