Hiram was quite convinced that there was no criminal charge against the young man he knew as Orrin Post. It was surely no misdemeanor for a man twenty-three years old to run away from his employer! It was evident that neither the bewhiskered man nor the lawyer were willing to accuse the man they called "Theodore Chester" of any particular wrongdoing. The circumstances remained a mystery. Whenever Miss Delia Pringle had anything to do with getting up a party that winter Hiram, Orrin and Jim Larry were of course invited. Indeed they were practically her right hand men. Miss Pringle frankly admired Orrin, treated Hiram as though she had known him all his life, and could not keep from hugging the fresh-faced and grinning Jim if he chanced to sit next to her on a straw ride or in any other free-and-easy assembly. Yancey Battick once remarked to Hiram, and with vast disapproval: "They can't come too young for Delia. She'd rob the cradle, she would!" "You're unfair to Miss Pringle, Mr. Battick," Hiram told him. "She is the best-hearted girl around here." "_Girl!_" snorted Battick, with emphasis. It was in January that something happened to Yancey Battick that was bound to change that misanthrope's attitude toward most of the world, and should have changed it particularly toward Miss Pringle. All through the winter up to that time, Battick could have been seen frequently walking about the lower end of the wheat field where his new seed was planted. That he apprehended trouble at almost any time he frankly admitted to Hiram. Sometimes in the middle of the night, or when the boys came home late after some party, or very early in the morning when they got up for some special purpose at Sunnyside Farm, they would see the spark of a wandering lantern down at that end of the twenty-acre lot. Battick was roaming about on the lookout for trouble. Just what the man expected to happen to the dormant wheat plants, in mid-winter, Hiram could not imagine. But it was a fact that going out at all hours of the night and in all kinds of weather brought its own punishment. Battick lived so much like a hermit anyway that had it not been for Hiram's interest in him, the man might never have seen spring again and the revival of his wonderful wheat. One day the young farm manager suddenly remembered that he had not seen or heard from Battick for at least three days. The thought somewhat startled him; yet he started along the county road toward the old Pringle place with no real fear that Battick was in trouble. When he mounted the low steps to the rickety front porch where he had taken refuge from the rain the first night he had come to this neighborhood, Hiram was startled by hearing a faint cry from inside the house. "Hi!" he shouted. "That you, Mr. Battick?"