[Illustration: Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder] “Yes'm, but one of the young gentlemen skipped the country, lit out fer foreign parts, took to the tall timber, as you might say.” “But he was not the one who did the shooting, was he?” asked Miss Lady, a sudden bright spot on either cheek, and the steady determination in her eye that had been Flathers' undoing. “I ain't never been able to say which one done it,” said the man, faltering under her steady gaze. “Perhaps it was worth your while not to say?” The man shot a quick glance of suspicion at her, then his eye came back to Phineas. “Of course, I don't want to push him into the Poor House, and if he expects to get work--” “I do, Dick,” said Phineas fervently. “Monday morning I put my shoulder-blade to the wheel somewhere.” “Well, if the ladies'll stand for this month,” said the man, evidently anxious to get away, “I'll wait a week longer on the back rent.” Miss Lady was preoccupied and silent on the way home. The world sometimes seemed desperately sordid, and human nature a baffling proposition. At her gate Mrs. Ivy halted suddenly: “Do you know,” she said, “it has just occurred to me! I shouldn't be one bit surprised if that horrid one-eyed man was the very one Mr. Morley shot!” CHAPTER XVI Christmas night on Billy-goat Hill, and twinkling lights, beginning with candles set in bottles in the humblest cottages in Bean Alley, dotted the hillside here and there, until they all seemed to converge at one brilliant spot on the summit, where a veritable halo of light hung above the hilltop. For Angora Heights was having a house-warming, and never since old Bob Carsey brought home his young bride from Alabama, had such preparations been known for a social function. All the carriages in the neighborhood had been pressed into service, and a half dozen motors had been sent out from town to convey the guests from the station to the house. Within the mansion everything was magnificently new. Period rooms, carried out with conscientious accuracy, opened into each other through arcaded doorways. Massive gilt mirrors accentuated the wide spaces of the hall, and repeated the lights of innumerable chandeliers. If a stray memory or an old association had by any chance crept into the Christmas ball, it would have found no familiar object on which to dwell. The atmosphere was as formal and impersonal as that of a museum. In the middle of the drawing-room, like a general issuing last orders before a battle, stood Mrs. Sequin, her ample figure encased in an armor of glistening black spangles, and her elaborately puffed coiffure surmounted by an incipient helmet of blazing gems. “Pull those portieres back a trifle,” she commanded, “and lower that window from the top. Has Jimpson gone to the station for the Queeringtons?” “Yes, madam, half an hour ago,” answered the maid.