“I came up from the ford.  You were asleep, I think.”

Mr. Cross denied the imputation.  “Not at this hour, sir, never at this hour—­not at ten o’clock in the morning, sir!  Later, maybe, when I’ve had my grog, I’ll take my forty winks—­”

“It is not ten o’clock.  It is nearly twelve, Mr. Cross.”

“Well, well!” returned Mr. Cross, whose face, blushing all the time, showed at no particular instant any particular discomfiture.  “I must just have dropped off a bit.  There’s little business nowadays, and a man had better sleep than do worse!  What’ll you have, sir?  I’ll call my girl Sally to serve you.

“Nothing at the moment, Mr. Cross.”  Cary sat down upon the step beside the other.  “I stopped here a month ago—­”

“You did,” answered the innkeeper.  “You stopped in January, too, didn’t you?”

“Yes.  In January.”

“I remember plain.  You wanted to know this and you wanted to know that, but you certainly treated me handsome, sir, and I’m far from grudging you any information Joe Cross can give!”

“We will go back to the same subject,” said Cary.  “Any recompense in my power to make I should consider but your due, Mr. Cross, could you tell me—­could you tell me what I want to know.”

He had spoken at first guardedly, but at last with an irresistible burst of feeling.  The innkeeper looked at him with dull wonder.  “I’d do anything to oblige ye, Mr. Cary, I certainly would!  But when we come to talking about the road, and who goes by, and who doesn’t go by, and about the seventh of September, and wasn’t I asleep and dreaming just before the big storm broke?—­why, I say, sir, No!  I don’t think I was.  ’Tween man and man, Mr. Cary, I don’t mind telling your father’s son, sir, that ‘tis possible I might ha’ had a drop more than usual, and ha’ been asleep earlier!  But I wasn’t asleep when the negro spoke to me.  ‘Hit’s gwine ter be an awful storm,’ says he, just that way, just as if he were lonesome and frightened.  His voice came to me as plain as my hand, and I know the mare he was riding.  ’Hit’s gwine ter be an awful storm,’ says he—­”

“The other—­the other!” exclaimed Cary impatiently.  “It is the other I would know of!”

“I told you before, and I tell you now,” replied Mr Cross, “that I don’t seem somehow clearly to remember what the other said.  I’ll take my oath that he said something, for he’s one that don’t miss speaking to a voter when he finds him!  It’s just slipped my mind—­things act sometimes as though there was a fog, but I wasn’t drunk and I wasn’t asleep.  No, sir! no more than I was just now when you come up and spoke to me—­and it don’t stand to reason, sir, that I could ha’ seen two horses instead of one!”

Cary, sitting moodily attentive, chin in hand, and his eyes upon the sunny road, started violently.  “Two horses instead of one,” he repeated, with a catch of the breath.  In a moment he was upon his feet, and the innkeeper, had he looked up and had he been less blear-eyed and dull, might have seen an approach to the old Fairfax Cary—­colour in cheek and light in eye.