“Yeth,” answered Vinie.  “He rides a black horse.”

The hunter glanced at her again.  “Little bird,” he thought, “your voice didn’t use to have so many notes.”  Aloud he said, “He’s grown to look like his brother.  I met him in the road the other day and we talked awhile.  He’s too stern and quiet, though.  All the time we talked I was thinking of a Cherokee whom I once met following a war party that had killed his wife.  Fairfax Cary had just the same air as that Indian—­still, like an afternoon on a mountain-top.  There’s no clue yet as to who shot his brother.”

Fairfax Cary, going by on Saladin, lifted his hat to the woman on the porch.  “Yes, he’s like that Cherokee,” repeated Adam.  “Where’s he riding?—­to Fontenoy, I reckon.  Now, little partridge, let’s go make the parlour look like Christmas.”

Vinie rose, and the hunter gathered up the green stuff.  She spoke again in the same fluttered voice.  “Mr. Adam, do you think—­do you think they’ll ever find out—­”

“Find out who shot Mr. Cary?” asked Gaudylock.  “They may—­there’s no telling.  Every day makes a trail like that more overgrown and hard to read.  But if Fairfax Cary is truly like my Cherokee, I’d not care to be the murderer, even five years and a thousand miles from here and now.  You may be sure the Cherokee got his man.  Now you take the mistletoe and I’ll take the holly, and we’ll make a Christmas bower to dance in.”  He raised his great armful and went into the house singing,—­

     “Once I was in old Kentucky,
     Christmas time, by all that’s lucky! 
     Bear meat, deer meat, coon and possum,
     Apple-jack we did allow some,
               In Kentucky.

     “Roaring logs and whining fiddle,
     Up one side and down the middle! 
     Two foot snow and ne’er a flower,—­
     But Molly Darke she danced that hour,
               In Kentucky!”

The hunter’s surmise was correct.  Fairfax Cary rode slowly on upon the old, familiar way to Fontenoy.  All the hills were brown, winter earth and winter air despite the brightness of the sunshine.  A blue stream rippled by, pine and cedar made silhouettes against a tranquil sky, and crows were cawing in a stubble-field.  Cary rode slowly, plodding on with a thoughtful brow.  The few whom he met greeted him respectfully, and he answered them readily enough, then pursued his way, again in a brown study.  The Fontenoy gates were reached at last, and he was about to bend from his saddle and lift the heavy latch, when a slim black girl in a checked gown made a sudden appearance in the driveway upon the other side.  “I’ll open hit, sah!  Don’ you trouble.  Dar now!”

The gate swung open, Cary rode through, and Deb appeared beside Miranda.  “We’ve been walking a mile,” she announced.  “Down the drive and back again, through the hollow, round the garden, and up to the glass door—­that’s a mile.  Are you going to stay to supper?”