After the incident of the church vestibule, Tom spent a week or more roaming the forests of Lebanon in rough shooting clothes, with the canvas hat pulled well over his eyes and a fowling-piece under his arm.

People said harsher things then.  With old Caleb failing visibly from day to day, and his mother keeping her room for the greater part of the time, it was a shame that a great strong young giant like Tom should go loitering about on the mountain, deliberately shirking his duty.  This was the elder Miss Harrison’s wording of the censure; and it was kinder than Mrs. Henniker’s, since it was the banker’s wife who first asked, with uplifted brows and the accent accusative, if the unspeakable Bryerson woman were safely beyond tramping distance from Woodlawn.

They were both mistaken.  For all Tom thought of her, Nancy Bryerson was as safe in her retreat at Pine Knob as were the squirrels he was supposed to be hunting; and they came and frisked unharmed on the branches of the tree under which he sat and munched his bit of bread and meat when the sun was at the meridian.

And he was not killing time.  He was deep in an inventive trance, with vengeance for the prize to be won, and for the means to the end, iron-works and pipe plants and forgings—­especially the forging of one particular thunderbolt which should shatter the Farley fortunes beyond repair.  When this bolt was finally hammered into shape he came out of the wood and out of the inventive trance, had an hour’s interview with Major Dabney, and took a train for New York.

I am not sure, but I think it was at Bristol, Tennessee, that the telegram from Norman, begging him to come back to South Tredegar at speed, overtook him.  This is a detail, important only as a marker of time.  For three days a gentleman with shrewd eyes and a hard-bitted jaw, registering at the Marlboro as “A.  Dracott, New York,” had been shut up with Mr. Duxbury Farley in the most private of the company’s offices in the Coosa Building, and on the fourth day Norman had made shift to find out this gentleman’s business.  Whereupon the wire to Tom, already on his way to New York, and the prayer for returning haste.

Tom caught a slow train back, and was met at a station ten miles out of town by his energetic ex-lieutenant.

“Of course, I didn’t dare do anything more than give him a hint,” was the conclusion of Norman’s exciting report.  “I didn’t know but he might give us away to Colonel Duxbury.  So, without telling him much of anything, I got him to agree to meet you at his rooms in the Marlboro to-night after dinner.  Then I was scared crazy for fear my wire to you would miss.”

“You are a white man, Fred, and a friend to tie to,” said Tom; which was more than he had ever said to Norman by way of praise in the days of master and man.  Then, as the train was slowing into the South Tredegar station:  “If this thing wins out, you’ll come in for something bigger than you had with Gordon and Gordon; you can bet on that.”