When the brief Easter holiday came an odd thing happened. Nellie Morrow declined to go with any of her school-friends. She wrote that she wanted to see dear old 'Mahbin again, and delightedly the miller brought her home. It was a week of torment to poor Dick Graham; a holiday that proved far from satisfactory to Morrow, for he saw with sudden start that his bonny Nell was becoming vastly interested in Mr. Frost, whom he was beginning to distrust. When Frost had come to Nemahbin, in December, he had sought the old miller, requested a confidential interview, told him, with all apparent frankness, of his meeting with Nellie at the home of his uncle, near Chicago, and of her telling him the sad story of Sam's disappearance. "Mr. Morrow," said he, "I believe I met and knew your son on the Pacific coast. What is more, I believe I can find him." The miller knew that Frost's relations were people of high position, but did not know that the man before him was very far from standing well in their esteem. But he had been imposed upon more than once by people who sought to make money from his eagerness to obtain any clue to the whereabouts of his missing boy. He closely questioned Frost, and was speedily convinced that there was no imposition here. He had known him, and known him well; for, even in little tricks of speech and manner, Frost could describe Sam to the life. The old man's first impulse was to take Frost with him and start for the Pacific coast at once; but the latter pointed out to him that the journey to mid Arizona was very long and expensive, and that he had reason to believe Sam had left there and gone with miners to Montana. He had friends and correspondents; he would write; he did write, and showed Morrow the letters, and they went apparently to Prescott, Arizona, but not for three months did answers come; and then they were vague and indefinite, and meantime the old man's heart had been torn with suspense and anxiety, and he rebelled at the restriction placed upon him by Frost, that he should admit to nobody that they were on the trail of his absent son--that Frost had known him well "in the mines," as he said, though by another name. He disliked it still more that there was so much of his own life while in the distant West of which Frost gave varying accounts, and always avoided speaking; and now it was plain that he was "making up" to Nellie; it was plain that she was far from averse to the attentions of this handsome and distinguished fellow, with his air of reserve and mystery; and it was plain that poor Dick Graham was both miserable and suspicious. He had been set against Frost from the very first.