Now the Colonel spoke with animation.  “Absolute.  I’ve a written offer from the Dyer brothers to take her for twenty-five thousand dollars, if she is delivered, safe and sound, on the morning she’s to run in the Ashland Oaks.  It’s a dead sure thing, my boy.  You can’t refuse.”

The young man hesitated, still.  “I’ll investigate, and—­well, I’ll see.”  He walked away, deep in thought.

The Colonel turned from him to Miss Alathea.  “Miss ’Lethe, congratulate yourself.  The victory is won.”

Frank turned upon his heel and spoke to Holton.  “What do you think of this investment?” he inquired.

“Wal,” said Holton, “I think it’s a blamed good thing.  I’d only like the chance to go into it, myself.”  He went closer to the youth and spoke in an instinctively low tone.  “By the way, this gal, hyar, Madge Brierly, owns fifty acres o’ land down there in the valley, that’s bound to be wuth money.  Like enough, with your help, I could buy it for a song.  I’ll make it all right with you.  What do you say?  Is it a bargain, Layson?” He held out his hand, evidently with no thought but that the questionable offer would be snapped up at once.

Layson drew back angrily.  “No,” he replied.

Holton, seeing that he had made a serious mistake, tried to correct it. 
“Oh, shucks, now!  I didn’t mean no harm.  That’s only business.”

Layson was intensely angered.  “I won’t waste words on you,” he said, “but think twice before you make me such a proposition again.”

Holton’s wrath rose vividly.  “Damn him!” he muttered as he walked away.  “I’ll pay him back for that!  I’ll get that gal’s land in spite of him, and I won’t stop at that.  I’ll pay him back for ... everythin’!  I’ll teach him what it air to stir the hate o’ hell in a man’s heart!”

Barbara, distressed anew by this unpleasant episode, had started to go after him, when the weird cry of an owl, a long drawn, tremulous:  “Hoo-oo-oo!” came from somewhere in the forest, close at hand.  It startled her.  “Heavens!” said she.  “What’s that?”

Neb, who also had been startled at the first penetrating, weird call, bethought himself, now, and answered her:  “It’s de deah.”

“The phenomenon!” exclaimed Miss Alathea.

“The Diana!” said the Colonel, looking at Frank slyly.

“Yes; she’s coming,” Frank said gaily, and then, looking down the path, started violently.  “Heavens, she’s coming!”

The Colonel, who also had looked down the path, hurriedly approached him, feigning worry.  “Frank, I haven’t got ’em again, have I?”

Madge approached them slowly in the quaint, old-fashioned costume she had resurrected from the chests of her dead mother’s finery and re-made, very crudely, in accordance with the fashion-plates which she had found down at the cross-roads store.  The result of her contriving was a startling mixture of fashions widely separated as to periods.  Her untutored taste had mixed colors clashingly.  Her unskilled fingers had sewed very bunchy seams.