"Somethin's gnawing at her," he continued, uneasily, "and she's freakish. She ain't been in that little puffer all summer, and now she wants it handy all the time. Folks that has things don't enjoy 'em, and those that hasn't 'em would. It's a queer world." CHAPTER XXX. THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER. Chief of Police Gordon stood on the station platform of the Rossignol branch of the Maine Central Railway. He had been earnestly warned, adjured, and bribed to trust no deputy, but to scrutinise himself the arrivals in every train-load of visitors to Rossignol. A certain criminal, whose full description was given him, might appear before him at any time. He was also to keep under constant espionage the households of Miss Gastonguay and Justin Mercer, for with one of these two persons the criminal might be expected to communicate. Chief Gordon did not know what the criminal's name was. The detective with whom he had been corresponding called him "Blackhead," and for "Blackhead" he was therefore looking as he stood in the sunshine with hands clasped behind him, his gaze going quickly from one to another of the members of an excursion party from up in the woods, who had come to spend a day by the shore. "Blackhead" would probably not be among them, although he might be. He also might be in any disguise. The detective had warned him that there was only one other being who could compete with him for dissimulation, and that being was not an inhabitant of this mortal sphere. He was in reality a man of middle age, but he might descend upon Rossignol in the guise of an old man, an old woman, a bride, or a bashful youth. However, transformed as successfully as he might be, he surely would attempt nothing as loud as this, and the chief smiled broadly, and glanced past rows of happy farmers' wives tugging along swarms of children, and accompanied by husbands stiff and uncomfortable in Sunday coats and stiff collars, to a group beside the hack drivers. These latter were splitting their sides in amusement. An old woman from far away up the line had come to town for the day. Her dress reminded the chief of pictures of his grandmother. How natural and old-fashioned it was. Verily, reality was stronger than art. No one could counterfeit so naturally an old resident from some clearing among the pines, a little "high" from the prospect of her day's outing. Her daughter, who was with her, was suffering agonies of mortification. She was a pale, consumptive-looking girl with big feet, a scant dress, and a white veil reaching only to her nose. This veil she kept twitching nervously as she plucked at her mother's shawl and begged her to come on.