falsehood; oh, she was _sure_ of that, but, like all children, she said, when suddenly accused, the impulse would be to deny, would it not? and then--had not the major observed?--did he not remember--that Jimmy was just a bit--imaginative? Dwight puzzled over her apparent unbelief. But very recently he had noticed other little things that vaguely worried him. Could it be that, as his boy grew older and mingled more with other boys, he was learning to be influenced more by them and less by the father? Could it be that he was seeing, hearing, things, to speak of which he dared not? There might be things of which he would be ashamed. Certainly the father had seen at times, since the homeward voyage, a certain hesitancy on part of the son, and within the past few days, for the first time in Jimmy's life, Dwight had noted symptoms of something like avoidance, concealment, embarrassment, _some_thing that told his jealous, over-anxious heart the boy no longer utterly confided in the man. It was late the previous evening when the little fellow had returned with his stanch friend, Sergeant French, and a fine string of trout, happy, radiant, proud of his success, but so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open long enough to undress and get to bed. Dwight had met him at the door, cautioning silence on mamma's account, and the young face that beamed up at his, all delight and eagerness at first, clouded almost instantly at the word. Jimmy did not even care for the tempting supper set aside for him--he had had such a big lunch, he said, in smothered tone, as he prattled eagerly to his father and showed his finny prizes, and sipped at his glass of milk. But Dwight had been brooding over little things that had come to him since Foster's assisted emigration. He had returned straight from his conference with Stone and the surgeon to find Inez reduced to the sofa and smelling salts--to tell her at once that their guest was gone, not because of a fracas with Ray, as Foster had furiously declared, but because of telegraphic orders from Washington that had come, possibly, as the result of Foster's own telegraphic inquiries of Saturday and Sunday. Not for a star would Dwight let his wife suppose that Foster's protracted visit had given him the least uneasiness! But the maid, that pert and flippant young person so much in evidence about the house, so indispensable to Inez, so intangibly a nuisance to him, kept flitting in and out, with her persistent, "Madame should compose herself"; "Madame should not try to talk."