they were
going at a spirited pace across the meadows to Arden.

With still no news of Tusk Potter, the Colonel had spent a restless day.
Earlier, the doughty son of Shadeland Wildon brought the little boy over
to see him, followed by Aunt Timmie in her precarious buggy; but it was
now afternoon and they had left. Shadows were lengthening, and the cows
were mooing at the pasture gate.

Dale, as usual, had spent the day in study. His absorption had made him
unconscious of intruders who came into the room. Timmie and the little
boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even
emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don' you know you'se gwine pop yoh
brains a-wu'kin' 'em so hard?"

Bip, who regarded Dale with mysterious interest, made farther advances.
He went up close, and looked wonderingly into his face; but at last both
he and the old woman left unseen and unheard.

All unconscious of his surroundings, this student was living in other
days with the dauntless Pompey. By the aid of the huge dictionary, now
seldom opened, he laboriously followed this daring friend of the great
Cicero. Since morning he had witnessed the capture of a thousand cities,
the slaying or subjugation of a million human beings--and more of this
was to come. Had lightning snapped about his head he would not have
known it for the wilder sounds of battlefields, scattered between Rome
and the Euphrates, possessing his brain.

When Jane arrived, Mac was properly introduced to the old gentleman, who
made a great fuss over him and directed her attention to his points of
unusual excellence. But Brent, he told her, was not about.

"Dale would like to see him," she said enthusiastically.

"Oh, yes," his face clouded, "I suppose so!"

"What's the matter?" she quickly asked.

"Matter?" he looked up. "Why, nothing, my dear! Nothing, of course!"

But it did not satisfy, and she asked again:

"Has anything happened?--Dale, or anything?"

He must have found some difficulty in evading this direct question, and
his hesitation, brief though it was, alarmed her.

"No, my dear. I cannot say that anything has happened. I may be growing
a little uncertain of him--that is, I may be afraid--oh, bother! It is
nothing but an old man's fancy!"

Nevertheless, when later, calling the mountaineer's name, she stepped
through the library window, an element of uncertainty, quite a different
sort from that which the Colonel was congratulating himself upo