"Tell you, he wasn't much to look at. Kind of slimpsy lookin'. Lean like. But he could work. Had a sleight with him about most things." "You are not giving the young man a very clear description of--er--Ted," interrupted the legal looking man. "What color are his eyes and his hair?" "Oh, his eyes are sort o' blue, or blue-gray, and his hair is brownish. Leastways, I should say it was. And he had kind of crinkly wrinkles about his eyes when he laughed--" "How old was the man?" interrupted Hiram quickly. "He is twenty-three years old this very month," replied the man from the back seat of the carryall. "He looks older," said the bewhiskered farmer. "Of course, you have no photograph of him?" asked Hiram slowly. "Wish I had!" exclaimed the other man. "I would plaster this whole country with reproductions of it if I had one." "Yes? Well," said Hiram, "I do not know any such man. At least, I do not remember any such asking me for work or passing this farm." "Well!" sighed the bewhiskered man, and took up his reins. "If you should ever see such a person let me hear about it, will you?" asked the other quickly, and thrust his hand into the rain with a card in it. "What did he do?" asked Hiram as the gray horses started. "He ran away from me, young fellow," the bearded man said shortly and grimly, and the carryall rolled away. Hiram looked at the card. It read: "Eben Craddock, Attorney at Law," with an address in a Cincinnati office building. "Odd thing," muttered Hiram, slipping the card into his pocket. He went back to the house, leaving the umbrella on the porch to drip. He went in and found that Jim Larry seemed to have followed Orrin out through the rear door. He sat down and picked up his book again; but he could not fix his mind on the story he had been reading. That bearded man's name was Post and the young man of twenty-three had run away from him. The date the lawyer had mentioned as that on which the fugitive was supposed to have come through Pringleton was the very day--he remembered it now--on the evening of which he had found Orrin so ill and helpless in the calf pen here on Sunnyside Farm! This was a good deal of a nut to crack--and it was a meaty nut when Hiram Strong had cracked it. However, both the man named Post and the lawyer had refused to give any details of why they were hunting the mysterious individual called "Theodore Chester." If he was a fugitive and a criminal why had they been so secretive? "I have the lawyer's card. Somehow I don't trust that fellow with the whiskers at all," muttered Hiram. "And I've know Orrin more than eight months, and know nothing but good of him." So he said nothing regarding the inquiry for Theodore Chester to either of his companions. As for Orrin, he did not appear again at the house until dark. For some reason hard to explain Hiram was willing to take a chance on Orrin. CHAPTER XXIV SOCIETY