“Yes, I had a letter to-day,” she returned, somewhat relieved.  “She seems to be better satisfied.”

Grey accepted the interrupting hint and fell to critical talk of the Squire’s horses.  After the wine Penhallow carried off his guest to the library, and avoiding politics with difficulty was unutterably bored by the little gentleman’s reminiscent nothings about himself, his crops, tobacco, wines, his habits of life, what agreed with him and what did not.  At last, with some final whisky, Mr. Grey went to bed.

Ann, who was waiting anxiously, eager to get through with the talk she dreaded, went at once into the library.  Penhallow rising threw his cigar into the fire.  She laughed, but not in her usual merry way, and cried, “Do smoke, James, I shall not mind it; I am forever disciplined to any fate.  There is a spittoon in the hall—­a spittoon!”

The Squire laughed joyously, and kissed her.  “I can wait for my pipe; we can’t have any lapse in domestic discipline.”  Then he added, “I hear that my good Josiah has gone away—­I may as well say, run away.”

“Yes—­he has gone, James.”  She hesitated greatly troubled.

“And you helped him—­a runaway slave—­you—­” He smiled.  It had for him an oddly humorous aspect.

“I did—­I did—­” and the little lady began to sob like a child.  “It was—­was wrong—­” There was nothing comic in it for Ann Penhallow.

“You angel of goodness,” he cried, as he caught her in his arms and held the weeping face against his shoulder, “my brave little lady!”

“I ought not to have done it—­but I did—­I did—­oh, James!  To think that my cousin should have brought this trouble on us—­But I did—­oh, James!”

“Listen, my dear.  If I had been here, I should have done it.  See what you have saved me.  Now sit down and let us have it all out, my dear, all of it.”

“And you really mean that?” she wailed piteously.  “You won’t think I did wrong—­you won’t think I have made trouble for you—­”

“You have not,” he replied, “you have helped me.  But, dear, do sit down and just merely, as in these many years, trust my love.  Now quiet yourself and let us talk it over calmly.”

“Yes—­yes.”  She wiped her eyes.  “Do smoke, James—­I like it.”

“Oh, you dear liar,” he said.  “And so it was Grey?”

She looked up.  “Yes, George Grey; but, James, he did not know how much we liked Josiah nor how good he had been to me, and how he got hurt when he stopped Leila’s pony.  He was sorry—­but it was too late—­oh, James!—­you will not—­oh, you will not—­”

“Will not what, dear?” Penhallow was disgusted.  A guest entertained in his own house to become a detective of an escaped slave in Westways, at his very gate!  “My charity, Ann, hardly covers this kind of sin against the decencies of life.  But I wish to hear all of it.  Now, who betrayed the man—­who told Grey?”

“I am sorry to say that it was Peter Lamb who first mentioned Josiah to George Grey as a runaway.  When he spoke of his lost fingers, George was led to suspect who Josiah really was.  Then he saw him, and as soon as he was sure, he wrote to a Mr. Woodburn, who was Josiah’s old owner.”