CONCERNING MR. FERRIS STANHOPE, THE POPULAR NOVELIST; ALSO PETER, THE QUIET ONLOOKER Peter had not yet returned to the yacht when Varney went to bed that night. Like the Finnegan of song, he was gone again when Varney rose next morning. Indeed, it was only too clear that his Celtic interests had been suddenly engrossed by matters much nearer his heart than the prospect, as he saw the thing, of spanking a naughty child. "He was off by half-past eight, sir," the steward, McTosh, told Varney at breakfast. "He said to tell you to give yourself no uneasiness, sir; that he was only going to Mr. Hare's--I think was the name--for a short call, and would return by ten o'clock." "What else did he say?" "Well, sir, he was saying how the poltix of the village is not all they might be, but he seemed very cheerful, sir, and took three times to the chops." At dinner-time last night such extraordinary behavior from his fellow-conspirator would have both disturbed and angered Varney. At breakfast-time this morning it hardly interested him. He had employed his walk from the cottage of refuge to the Carstairs front gate to unbelievable advantage. In fact, his mission in Hunston seemed to be all over but the shouting, and until the moment of final action arrived, there appeared no reason why Peter should not employ his time in any way he saw fit. The heavy storm had scoured the air, and the world was bright as a new pin. In the shaded solitude of the after-deck, Mr. Carstairs's agent sat in an easy-chair with a cigarette, and thought over the remarkable happenings of his first night in Hunston. In retrospect young Editor Smith seemed to be but the ordered instrument of fate, dispatched in a rowboat to draw him against his will from the yacht to the town, where all his business was neatly arranged for his doing. Certainly it appeared as if the hand of intelligent destiny must have been in it somewhere. No mere blind luck could have driven him half a mile into the country to the one spot in all Hunston--impossibly unlikely as it was--where he could become acquainted with Uncle Elbert's daughter without the formality of an introduction. Uncle Elbert! How desperately the old man must desire his daughter to have planned a mad scheme like this with a subterfuge at the expense of his best friend cunningly hidden away in the heart of it. Yet, after the first staggering flash, Varney had found it impossible to be angry with Mr. Carstairs. He only felt sorry for him, sorrier than he had ever felt for anybody in his life. The old man's madness and his deceit were but the measure of his desire for his daughter. And the more he desired her, so it seemed to Varney, the more he was entitled to have her.