The Governor's blessing failed to dispel the gloom that settled upon Mr. Archibald Bennett as he crept through the shed where the laborers were housed and found his cot. It was a hot humid night, with the chirr of queer insects outside mocking with weary iteration the lusty snores of the weary farm hands. He might bolt, now that he had Isabel's address, and suffer the Governor to manage in his own fashion the foolhardy enterprises, of which he had spoken so lightly; but to do this would be only to prove himself a deserter. The business of delivering Edith Congdon into Isabel's hands was his affair as much as the Governor's. And having twice had a taste of Isabel's anger his appetite was sated. To win her applause he must appear before her a heroic figure, but the part the Governor had assigned him was little calculated to develop his chivalric qualities. He found himself warmly hating Putney Congdon. If Congdon had only had the decency to die there would not be all this bother, and in his bitterness he resolved that if he got another chance he would make an end of him. Soothed by this decision he fell asleep. IV The morning opened auspiciously with a raking from Grubbs, who, finding that the Governor had decamped, most ungenerously held Archie responsible for his departure. "I swear every year," he declared, "I'll never hire another tramp and hereafter I'll let the crops rot before I'll have one on the place." Archie replied with heat that he knew nothing about the Governor or the reason for his precipitate passing. As the scolding the foreman had given him the day before still rankled, he protested his ignorance of the Governor and all his ways with a vigor strengthened much to his own edification by oaths he had never employed before. The foreman, taken aback by his onslaught, mumbled and then asked humbly as though ashamed of his lack of confidence in his employee: "Well, you two landed here together and I thought you might be gettin' ready to play the same trick. Look here, d'ye know anything about horses?" "Well, I've ridden some," Archie answered guardedly, fearing the imposition of some disagreeable task as a punishment for his violent language. "Ridden; where th' hell have you rode?" Archie's knowledge of horses had been gained by cautious riding in park bridle paths with a groom, but to confess this would be only to increase the wrath and arouse the suspicions of the farmer. "Oh, I've always been around horses," said Archie. "I guess I can handle 'em all right." The foreman meditated, gave a hitch to his trousers, inspected Archie from head to foot and spat.