“I don’t like to be scared into doin’ a thing.”

“No; but we don’t want a row on our hands just now.  Farley might make capital out of it.”

Caleb nodded.  Then he said:  “Didn’t I see Dyckman comin’ out of your shanty ’long about eleven o’clock?”

“Yes; he came out to do me a little favor, and it went mighty near to making him sweat blood.  Shall you need me any more to-day?”

“No, I reckon not.  Goin’ away?”

“I’m going to town on the five-ten, and I may not be back till late.”

Tom’s business in South Tredegar was unimportant.  There was a word or two to be said personally in the ear of Hanchett, the senior member of the firm of attorneys intrusted with the legal concernments of Gordon and Gordon, and afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro.  But the real object of the town trip disclosed itself when he took an electric car for the foot of Lebanon on the line connecting with the inclined railway running up the mountain to Crestcliffe Inn.  He had not seen Ardea since the midwinter night of soul-awakenings; and Alecto’s finger was still pressing on the wound inflicted by the closed doors of Mountain View Avenue and his father’s misdirected sympathy.

He found Major Dabney smoking on the hotel veranda, and his welcome was not scanted here, at least.  There was a vacant chair beside the Major’s and the Major’s pocket case of long cheroots was instantly forthcoming.  Would not the returned Bachelor of Science sit and smoke and tell an old man what was going on in the young and lusty world beyond the mountain-girt horizons?

Tom did all three.  His boyish awe for the old autocrat of Paradise had mellowed into an affection that was almost filial, and there was plenty to talk about:  the final dash in the technical school; the outlook in the broader world; the great strike which was filling all mouths; the business prospects for Chiawassee Consolidated.

The moment being auspicious, Tom sounded the master of the Deer Trace coal lands on the reorganization scheme, and found nothing but complaisance.  Whatever rearrangement commended itself to Tom and his father, and to Colonel Duxbury Farley, would be acceptable to the Major.

“I reckon I can trust you, Tom, and my ve’y good friend, youh fatheh, to watch out for Ardea’s little fo’tune,” was the way he put it.  “I haven’t so ve’y much longeh to stay in Paradise,” he went on, with a silent little chuckle for the grim pun, “and what I’ve got goes to her, as a matteh of cou’se.”  Then he added a word that set Tom to thinking hard.  “I had planned to give her a little suhprise on her wedding-day:  suppose you have the lawyehs make out that block of new stock to Mistress Vincent Farley instead of to me?”

Tom’s hard thinking crystallized into a guarded query.

“Of course, Major Dabney, if you say so.  But wouldn’t it be more prudent to make it over in trust for her and her children before she becomes Mrs. Farley?”