“I guess we’ll set that j’int to-morrow mornin’,” said Colonel Sprowle,—­which made a laugh at the Deacon’s expense, and virtually settled the question.

“Now trust this young man in my care,” said the old Doctor, “and go home and finish your naps.  I knew him when he was a boy, and, I’ll answer for it, he won’t trouble you any more.  The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I can tell you, whatever else they are.”

The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left the prisoner with him.

Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door, with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight.  The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the limits of the State.

“Do you want money?” he said, before he left him.

Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.

“Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle’s?”

Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was going, to take passage for a port in South America.

“Good-bye, Richard,” said the Doctor.  “Try to learn something from to-night’s lesson.”

The Southern impulses in Dick’s wild blood overcame him, and he kissed the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun can cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life.  So Dick Venner disappears from this story.  An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as if she had not been doing anything more than her duty during her four hours’ stretch of the last night.

Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor’s decisions.

“It’s all right,” he said to Mr. Bernard.  “The fellah’s Squire Venner’s relation, anyhaow.  Don’t you want to wait here, jest a little while, till I come back?  The’ ’s a consid’able nice saddle ‘n’ bridle on a dead hoss that’s layin’ daown there in the road, ‘n’ I guess the’ a’n’t no use in lettin’ on ’em spile,—­so I’ll jest step aout ‘n’ fetch ’em along.  I kind o’ calc’late ’t won’t pay to take the cretur’s shoes ‘n’ hide off to-night,—­’n’ the’ won’t be much iron on that hoss’s huffs an haour after daylight, I’ll bate ye a quarter.”

“I’ll walk along with you,” said Mr. Bernard;—­“I feel as if I could get along well enough now.”

So they set off together.  There was a little crowd round the dead mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned from the Doctor’s house to see the scene of the late adventure.  In addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this time.  His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,—­sharp, but thin, like bad cider-vinegar.