Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet it seemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had disappeared--vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected, stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody? "It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger, with not a minute to spare," mused Katrine. At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front door. "Sit down, Johnny," she said, holding out her hand, and making room for me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for--to deliver the Squire's message to Mr. Reste. "Mr. Reste has left us," said Katrine. "He went away last night." "Went away last night!" I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly. "What took him off so suddenly?" Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel. "It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him--don't you see that, Johnny?" she said. "Even that little desk, full of private papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left." "He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps." "The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning," returned Katrine. "It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds; but it did not call him away. _Nothing_ called him away, that I can discover. You can't think how it is worrying me; it seems just a mystery." "Look here, Katrine," I said, after mentally twisting the matter this way and that, "I've known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he went?" "Well, yes; I fancy he does: he is indoors now, packing Mr. Reste's things: but he does not tell me." After talking a little longer, we strolled up the path together, and had reached the yard when Mr. Barbary suddenly opened the kitchen door to shake the dust from a coat that seemed covered with it. His handsome face took a haughty expression, and his slender, shapely form was drawn up in pride as he looked sternly at me, as much as to say, "What do you want here?"