Norman stood it until late Monday afternoon.  Then, when Caleb had relieved him at Tom’s bedside, he drove down to Gordonia and wrote the note to Miss Dabney, sending it up the mountain by one of the Helgerson boys with strict injunctions to give it to Miss Ardea herself.

The Dabneys came down from the mountain Tuesday morning, and Ardea was so far from disregarding her summons that she stopped the carriage at the Woodlawn gates and went directly to comfort Mrs. Martha and to offer her services in the sick-room.  Tom was in one of his stubbornest paroxysms when she entered, but at the touch of her hand he became quiet, and a little later fell into a deep sleep, the first since the Saturday night of coma and stertorous breathings.

That same afternoon Crestcliffe Inn lost another guest, and the smoking-room at Warwick Lodge was lighted far into the night.  Two men talked in low tones behind the carefully-shaded windows, one of them, the younger, lounging in the depths of an easy-chair, and the other pacing the floor in deepest abstraction.

“I only know what Ardea tells me,” said the lounger, answering the final question put by the floor pacer.  “He’s out of his head—­and out of the way, temporarily, at least.  Now is your time to strike.”

Mr. Duxbury Farley nodded his head slowly.

“It was providential for us, Vincent, this assault just at the critical moment.  I have struck.  I had an interview with Caleb this evening and made him an offer for the pipe plant.  He is to give us his answer to-morrow morning.”

Silence fell for a little time, and then the younger man in the wicker chair smote his palms together.

“Curse him!” he gritted vengefully, transferring his thought from Caleb Gordon to Caleb Gordon’s son.  “I hope he’ll die!”

The elder man paused in his walk.  “Why, Vincent, my son!  What has come over you?  It is merely a matter of business, and we mustn’t be vindictive.”

“Business be damned!” snarled the younger man.  “Can’t you see?  She has promised to marry me—­and she loves him.  Are you going to bed?  Well, I’m not.  I’ve got something else to do first.”

A few minutes later he let himself noiselessly out at the side door of the Lodge, and turned down the avenue in the direction of Deer Trace.  But after crossing the bridge over the creek, he took a diagonal course through the stubble-fields and bore to the right.  And when he finally reached and climbed the wall into the pike, it was at a point directly opposite the forking of the rough wood road which led off to the Pine Knob settlement.

As he leaped over into the highway, a man carrying a squirrel gun stepped from behind a tree.

“I was allowin’ you’d done forgot,” said the man, yawning sleepily.

“I never forget,” was the short rejoinder.  Then:  “Come with me, and you shall hear with your own ears, since you won’t take my word for it.  Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it’s your own affair.”