"I was told to ask for Mr. Strong." "That is my name." "Then you do run this here Sunnyside Farm?" "You are correctly informed, sir." "And they tell me you've grown the biggest crop of corn and the heaviest wheat ever seen on this land," said the bearded man from beyond Pringleton. "We've done right well here this year." "Well, well! Well, I've got six calves here, Mr. Stephen Bronson bought and told me to deliver to you." "All right. Drive down that road beside the barn, if you will. We will unload them at the calf pens." He jumped upon the wagon at the rear to look at the calves and ride down to the place indicated. All the time he was wondering what would happen if the bewhiskered man should spy Orrin--if the real Orrin Post should confront the young man who claimed that name. Ought he to have prepared his friend for this meeting? Should he inquire of the farmer what the mystery was all about, anyway? Hiram remembered how Orrin had slipped out of the house and kept away when this farmer and the lawyer had appeared at Sunnyside the previous winter. What would he do now? And just then the teamster turned the trotting horses into the paddock and brought them to a standstill with a flourish. "Whoa, there!" he shouted. "Where do you want these calves put, Mr. Strong? Here, you--By crippity! how the deuce did you come here, Ted Chester?" Hiram jumped off the rear of the wagon and ran around. Leaning on a fork the young man he knew as Orrin Post confronted the farmer. "So it is you, is it, Mr. Post?" the younger man said. "You mean to say you've been here all this time? And that lawyer and me have been right here and asked--" Suddenly he swung to look at Hiram. He shook a finger at him. "What did you mean by telling me and that lawyer you didn't know this fellow?" "I did not. You did not make me understand that this was the man you were looking for," declared Hiram without looking at his friend. "You were holding out on us," said the farmer. "You made me lose a fifty-dollar note." "How is that?" "That lawyer promised it to me if we found Ted, here. And now I don't suppose he'll give a cent." "Anybody would be mighty foolish to give fifty dollars for me," broke in the man who appeared to be the missing Theodore Chester. "What do they want you for, anyway?" Hiram demanded. "I don't know." "Do you know?" Hiram asked the original Orrin Post. "That lawyer did not tell me. But if this fellow, Ted Chester, hadn't left me flat--" "If you hadn't put me out when I was taken sick, I suppose you would have got the reward," said the accused. "But why should anybody offer a reward for you?" Hiram asked him again. "Because they want me, I suppose." "What do they want you for? And who wants you?" "Humph! I'm not going to tell everybody that," said the other, with a side glance at the bearded man, indicating that Post was the person he did not care to confide in.