He was aware that, while he made this statement, Zeb Meader’s eyes were riveted on him, and he knew that the farmer was weighing him in the balance.

“Sell out?” exclaimed Mr. Meader.  “You advise me to sell out?”

Austen did not get angry.  He understood this man and the people from which he sprang.

“The question is for you to decide—­whether you can get more money by a settlement.”

“Money!” cried Zeb Meader, “I have found it pretty hard to git, but there’s some things I won’t do for it.  There’s a reason why they want this case hushed up, the way they’ve be’n actin’.  I ain’t lived in Mercer and Putnam County all my life for nothin’.  Hain’t I seen ’em run their dirty politics there under Brush Bascom for the last twenty-five years?  There’s no man has an office or a pass in that county but what Bascom gives it to him, and Bascom’s the railrud tool.”  Suddenly Zeb raised himself in bed.  “Hev’ they be’n tamperin’ with you?” he demanded.

“Yes,” answered Austen, dispassionately.  He had hardly heard what Zeb had said; his mind had been going onward.  “Yes.  They sent me an annual pass, and I took it back.”

Zeb Meader did not speak for a few moments.

“I guess I was a little hasty, Austen,” he said at length.

“I might have known you wouldn’t sell out.  If you’re’ willin’ to take the risk, you tell ’em ten thousand dollars wouldn’t tempt me.”

“All right, Zeb,” said Austen.

He left the hospital and struck out across the country towards the slopes of Sawanec, climbed them, and stood bareheaded in the evening light, gazing over the still, wide valley northward to the wooded ridges where Leith and Fairview lay hidden.  He had come to the parting of the ways of life, and while he did not hesitate to choose his path, a Vane inheritance, though not dominant, could not fail at such a juncture to point out the pleasantness of conformity.  Austen’s affection for Hilary Vane was real; the loneliness of the elder man appealed to the son, who knew that his father loved him in his own way.  He dreaded the wrench there.

And nature, persuasive in that quarter, was not to be stilled in a field more completely her own.  The memory and suppliance of a minute will scarce suffice one of Austen’s temperament for a lifetime; and his eyes, flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be.  Just what the state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too vague—­accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give way to the attraction he felt for her.  His sense of humour intervened if he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing the acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of opposition to the dragon.  A young woman, surrounded as she was, could be expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political morality:  let him take Zeb Meader’s case, and her loyalty would naturally be with her father,—­if she thought of Austen Vane at all.