Then Tom recalled Japheth’s word of the morning.

“Hunting for me?  Well, I’m not very hard to find,” he said, unconsciously repeating the answer he had made to the horse-trader’s warning.

“Couldn’t you make out to go off somewheres for a little spell?” she asked half-pleadingly.

“Run away, you mean?  Hardly; I’m too busy just at present.  Besides, I haven’t any quarrel with your father.  What’s he making trouble about now?”

She put her face in her hands, and though she was silent, he could see that sobs were shaking her.  Being neither more nor less than a man, her tears made him foolish.  He put his arm around her and was trying to find the comforting word, when the heavens fell.

How Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, going the round-about way from one house to the other to avoid the dew-wet grass of the lawns, came fairly within arm’s-reach before he saw or heard them, remained a thing inexplicable.  But when he looked up they were there, Miss Euphrasia straightening herself aloof in virtuous disapproval, and Ardea looking as if some one had suddenly shown her the head of Medusa.

Tom separated himself from Nan in hot-hearted confusion and stood as a culprit taken in the act.  Nan hid her face again and turned away.  It was Miss Dabney the younger who found words to break the smarting silence.

“Don’t mind us, Mr. Gordon,” she said icily.  “We were going to Woodlawn to see if your father and mother could come over after dinner.”

Tom smote himself alive and made haste to open the foot-path gate for them.  There was nothing more said, or to be said; but when they were gone and he was once more alone with Nan, he was fighting desperately with a very manlike desire to smash something; to relieve the wrathful pressure by hurting somebody.  Let it be written down to his credit that he did not wreak his vengeance on the defenseless.  Thomas Jefferson, the boy, would not have hesitated.

[Illustration:  Tom made haste to open the foot-path gate for them.]

“You were going to tell me about your father,” he said, striving to hold the interruption as if it had not been, and yet tingling in every nerve to be free.  “Did you come all the way down the mountain to warn me?”

She nodded, adding:  “But that didn’t make no differ’; I had to come anyway.  He run me out, paw did.”

“Heavens!” ejaculated Tom, prickling now with a new sensation.  “And you haven’t any place to stay?”

She shook her head.

“No.  I was allowin’ maybe your paw’d let me sleep where you-uns keep the hawsses—­jest for a little spell till I could make out what-all I’m goin’ to do.”

He was too rageful to be quite clear-sighted.  Yet he conceived that he had a duty laid on him.  Once in the foolish, infatuated long-ago he had told her he would take care of her; he remembered it; doubtless she was remembering it, too.  But her suggestion was not to be considered for a moment.