Gordon was passing the country colony’s church when one of the torch-like flares reddened on the night, and the glow picked out the gilt cross at the top of the sham Norman tower.  He flung up a hand involuntarily, as if to put the emblem, and that for which it stood, out of his life.  At the same instant a whiff of the acrid smoke from the distant furnace fires tingled in his nostrils, and he quickened his pace.  The hour for which all other hours had been waiting had struck.  Love had called, and religion had made its silent protest; but the smell in his nostrils was the smoky breath of Mammon, the breath which has maddened a world:  he strode on doggedly, thinking only of his triumph and how he should presently compass it.

The two great poplar-trees, sentineling what had once been the gate of the old Gordon homestead, had been spared through all the industrial changes.  When he would have opened the wicket to pass on to the log-house offices, an armed man stepped from behind one of the trees with an oath in his mouth and his gun-butt drawn up to strike.  Before the blow could fall, the furnace flare blazed aloft like a mighty torch, and the man grounded his weapon.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Gordon; I—­I took ye for somebody else,” he stammered; and Tom scanned his face sharply by the light of the burning gases.

“Whom?—­for instance,” he queried.

“Why-e-yeh—­I reckon it don’t make any diff’rence—­my tellin’ you; you’d ought to have it in for him, too.  I was layin’ for that houn’-dog ’at walks on his hind legs and calls hisself Vint Farley.”

“Who are you?” Tom demanded.

“Kincaid’s my name, and I’m s’posed to be one o’ the strike guards; leastwise, that’s what I hired out for a little spell ago.  I couldn’t think of nare’ a better way o’ gettin’ at the damned—­”

Gordon interrupted bruskly.  “Cut out the curses and tell me what you owe Vint Farley.  If your debt is bigger than mine, you shall have the first chance.”

The gas-flash came again.  There was black wrath in the man’s eyes.

“You can tote it up for yourself, Tom-Jeff Gordon.  Late yeste’day evening when me and Nan Bryerson drove to town for your Uncle Silas to marry us, she told me what I’d been mistrustin’ for a month back—­that Vint Farley was the daddy o’ her chillern.  He’s done might’ nigh ever’thing short o’ killin’ her to make her swear ’em on to you; and I allowed I’d jest put off goin’ back West till I’d fixed his lyin’ face so ’at no yuther woman’d ever look at it.”

Gordon staggered and leaned against the fence palings, the red rage of murder boiling in his veins.  Here, at last, was the key to all the mysteries; the source of all the cruel gossip; the foundation of the wall of separation that had been built up between his love and Ardea.  When he could trust himself to speak he asked a question.

“Who knows this, besides yourself?”

“Your Uncle Silas, for one:  he allowed he wouldn’t marry us less’n she told him.  I might’ nigh b’lieve he had his suspicions, too.  He let on like it was Farley that told him on you, years ago, when you was a boy.”