urious
creatures. Phrony's mother she appeared to like him, and I suppose we
will have to make up with him. So I hev come up here to see if I can git
his address."

Keith's heart sank within him. He knew Ferdy Wickersham too well not to
know on what a broken reed the old man leaned.

"Some folks was a-hintin'," pursued the old fellow, speaking slowly,
"as, maybe, that young man hadn't married her; but I knowed better then
that, because, even if Phrony warn't a good girl,--which she is, though
she ain't got much sense,--he knowed _me_. They ain't none of 'em ever
intimated that to _me_," he added explanatorily.

Keith was glad that he had not intimated it. As he looked at the squire,
he knew how dangerous it would be. His face was settled into a grimness
which showed how perilous it would be for the man who had deceived
Phrony, if, as Keith feared, his apprehensions were well founded.

But at that moment both Phrony and Wickersham were far beyond Squire
Rawson's reach.

The evening after Phrony Tripper left New Leeds, a young woman somewhat
closely veiled descended from the train in Jersey City. Here she was
joined on the platform a moment later by a tall man who had boarded the
train at Washington, and who, but for his spruced appearance, might
have been taken for Mr. J. Quincy Plume. The young woman having
intrusted herself to his guidance, he conducted her across the ferry,
and on the other side they were met by a gentleman, who wore the collar
of his overcoat turned up. After a meeting more or less formal on one
side and cordial on the other, the gentleman gave a brief direction to
Mr. Plume, and, with the lady, entered a carriage which was waiting and
drove off; Mr. Plume following a moment later in another vehicle.

"Know who that is?" asked one of the ferry officials of another. "That's
F.C. Wickersham, who has made such a pile of money. They say he owns a
whole State down South."

"Who is the lady?"

The other laughed. "Don't ask me; you can't keep up with him. They say
they can't resist him."

An hour or two later, Mr. Plume, who had been waiting for some time in
the cafe of a small hotel not very far up-town, was joined by Mr.
Wickersham, whose countenance showed both irritation and disquietude.
Plume, who had been consoling himself with the companionship of a
decanter of rye whiskey, was in a more jovial mood, which further
irritated the other.

"You say she has balked? Jove! She has got more in h