“All right, Japhe; I was only deviling you a little.  Take him up to the Woodlawn stables and tell William Henry Harrison to give him the box stall.  I’ll try him to-morrow morning, if the weather is good.”

Brother Japheth’s business was concluded, and the architect who was building the latest extension to the pipe-pit floor was heading across the yard to consult the young boss.  Pettigrass paused with his foot in the stirrup to say, “Old Tike Bryerson’s on the rampage ag’in; folks up at the valley head say he’s a-lookin’ for you, Tom-Jeff.”

“For me?” said Tom; then he laughed easily.  “I don’t owe him anything, and I’m not very hard to find.  What’s the matter?”

He thought it a little singular at the time that Japheth gave him a curious look and mounted and rode away without answering his question.  But the building activities were clamoring for time and attention, and his father was waiting to consult him about a run of iron that was not quite up to the pipe-making test requirements.  So he forgot Japheth’s half-accusing glance at parting, and the implied warning that had preceded it, until an incident at the day’s end reminded him of both.

The incident turned on the fact of his walking home.  Ordinarily he struck work when the furnace whistle blew, riding home with his father behind old Longfellow; but on this particular evening Kinderling, the architect, missed his South Tredegar train, and Tom spent an extra hour with him, discussing further and future possibilities of expansion.  Kinderling got away on a later train, and Tom closed his office and took the long mile up the pike afoot in the dusk of the autumn evening, thinking pointedly of many things mechanical and industrial, and never by any chance forereaching to the epoch-marking event that was awaiting him at the Woodlawn gate.

His hand was upon the latch of the ornamental side wicket opening on the home foot-path when a woman, crouching in the shadow of the great-gate pillar, rose suddenly and stood before him.  He did not recognize her at first; it was nearly dark, and her head was snooded in a shawl.  Then she spoke, and he saw that it was Nancy Bryerson—­a Nan sadly and terribly changed, but with much of the wild-creature beauty of face and form still remaining.

“You done forgot me, Tom-Jeff?” she asked; and then, at his start of recognition:  “I allow I have changed some.”

“Surely I haven’t forgotten you, Nan.  But you took me by surprise; and I can’t see in the dark any better than most people.  What are you doing down here in the valley so late in the evening?” He tried to say it superiorly, paternally, as an older man might have said it—­and was not altogether successful.  The mere sight of her set his blood aswing in the old throbbing ebb and flow, though, if he had known it, it was pity now rather than passion that gave the impetus.

“You allow it ain’t fittin’ for me to be out alone after night?” she said, with a hard little laugh.  “I reckon it ain’t goin’ to hurt me none; anyways, I had to come.  Paw’s been red-eyed for a week, and he’s huntin’ for you, Tom-Jeff.”