“Has he been out here to see you?”

“And he won’t come.  That man knows how to keep out of danger.  I don’t believe you’ll marry him.”

“Why?”

“Because I intend to be a father to you and pay all your debts,” said Samson.

The Doctor called from the door of the cabin.

Bim said:  “God bless you and Harry!” as she turned away to take up her task again.

That night both of them began, as they say, to put two and two together.  While he rode on in the growing dusk the keen intellect of Samson saw a convincing sequence of circumstances—­the theft of the mail sack, the false account of Harry’s death, the failure of his letters to reach their destination, and the fact that Bim had accepted money from Davis in time of need.  A strong suspicion of foul play grew upon him and he began to consider what he could do in the matter.

Having forded a creek he caught the glow of a light in the darkness a little way up the road.  It was the lighted window of a cabin, before whose door he stopped his horse and hallooed.

“I am a belated and hungry traveler on my way to Chicago,” he said to the man who presently greeted him from the open doorway.

“Have you come through Honey Creek settlement?” the latter asked.

“Left there about an hour ago.”

“Sorry, mister, but I can’t let you come into the house.  If you’ll move off a few feet I’ll lay some grub on the choppin’ block an’ up the road about a half-mile you’ll find a barn with some hay in it where you and your horse can spend the night under cover.”

Samson moved away and soon the man brought a package of food and laid it on the block and ran back to the door.

“I’ll lay a piece of silver on the block,” Samson called.

“Not a darned cent,” the man answered.  “I hate like p’ison to turn a feller away in the night, but we’re awful skeered here with children in the house.  Good-by.  You can’t miss the barn.  It’s close ag’in’ the road.”

Samson ate his luncheon in the darkness, as he rode, and presently came upon the barn and unsaddled and hitched and fed his horse in one end of it—­the beast having drunk his fill at the creek they had lately forded—­and lay down to rest, for the night, with the saddle blanket beneath him and his coat for a cover.  A wind from the north began to wail and whistle through the cracks in the barn and over its roof bringing cold weather.  Samson’s feet and legs had been wet in the crossing so that he found it difficult to keep warm.  He crept to the side of his horse, which had lain down, and found a degree of comfort in the heat of the animal.  But it was a bad night, at best, with only a moment, now and then, of a sort of one-eyed sleep in it.

“I’ve had many a long, hard night but this is the worst of them,” Samson thought.