“Oh, yes, friends.” She wondered suddenly if, after all, she could let Archie go. If she should never see Parker again, if it was as Carter had told her, that he would marry Alicia, what of herself? “I’d no like to be an old maid,” she told that same self honestly, “and, after all, who better than Archie?” As a minister’s wife she could give herself up to doing good, and that would be a wise and consistent thing to do. She might not be as happy as she had hoped, but she could make others happy. She looked up wistfully. “Is it of young Carter Ritchie you’re thinking?” she asked, twisting the ends of her handkerchief abstractedly. “Who else could it be? He is with ye morn, noon, and night.” “It is not he more than yourself, Archie. We are friends as you and I are, and he is content that way; we are nothing but comrades.” She did not confess that half the charm of Carter’s society lay in the fact that she liked to hear him talk of his Virginia home and of his cousins. Archie’s face brightened. “Then ye’ll keep the same way o’ thinking and ye’re no changed?” “I’m not changed this last month if that’s what you mean. I feel the same toward you, Archie, but if you are going to bring me to task every time I go walking with another, I can’t answer for consequences.” “I’ll try to be content,” said Archie, sighing, and they parted in peace. But just about this time came an experience which, for the time being, put all else out of Agnes’s head. It was Dr. Flint who brought word that matters were about to culminate in the affair with Hump Muirhead. Agnes had seldom seen the doctor since the day of their search for Parker, and she was surprised at his making his appearance one morning, finding her housing a hen with a late brood of chickens. “Ah, Miss Agnes, good morning,” he said as he doffed his cap. “You are the very lady I wished to see.” Agnes put the last chirping, fluffy ball of a chick under its mother’s wings, and arose to her feet. “I am glad to see you, Dr. Flint. You seldom come around this way.” “No, my place is so far away from this, you know. I thought, however, that I’d like to be the first to bring you the news that we’re likely to be rid of Humphrey Muirhead by this time to-morrow.” “Why, what do you mean? Has he decided that, after all, it’s best to go peaceably?” “Not a bit of it. The boys are going to help him get away, and he’ll not have to walk either.” Agnes began to understand. “They will not do anything cruel, I hope.” “Well, I have heard that riding on a rail is not the most comfortable way to travel.” “Oh!” Agnes was horror-stricken, for even though she knew such practices were not uncommon, she had never known any one who was so treated. “The boys concluded,” Dr. Flint continued, “that they had stood about all they were going to from Hump Muirhead, and they have about settled it that he’s got to go, and that right quick.” “Is there anything new? Has he done anything else lately?”