“I? Oh, Mr. Dwight, don't say that!” Helen pleaded. “Well, I'm only telling you the _truth_,” said Dwight, throwing his cigar away and putting, both thumbs under his suspenders. “You know that as well as I do. He sees how you are bothered about your old mammy, and he has simply taken up your cause. It's just what I'd 'a' done at his age. I reckon I'd 'a' fought till I dropped in my tracks for a girl I--but from all accounts you and Carson couldn't agree, or rather _you_ couldn't. He seems to be agreeing now and staking his life and political chances on it. Well, I don't blame him. It never run in the Dwight blood to love more than once, an' then it was always for the pick of the flock. Well, you are the pick in this town, an' I wouldn't feel like he was my boy if he stepped down and out as easy as some do these days. I met him on his way to the farm and tried to shame him out of the trip. I joined the others in teasing him about that Augusta fellow, who can do his courting by long-distance methods in an easy seat at his writing-desk, while up-country chaps are doing the rough work for nothing, but it didn't feaze 'im. He tossed his stubborn head, got pretty red in the face, and said he was trying to help old Linda and Lewis out, and that he know well enough you didn't care a cent for him.” Helen had grown hot and cold by turns, and she now found herself unable to make any adequate response to such personal allusions. “Huh, I see I got you teased, too!” Dwight said, with a short, staccato laugh. “Oh, well, you mustn't mind me. I'll go in and see if my wife is asleep, and if she is I'll go to bed myself.” Helen, deeply depressed, and beset with many conflicting emotions, turned back to the veranda, and, instead of going up to her room, she reclined in a hammock stretched between two of the huge, fluted columns. She had been there perhaps half an hour when her heart almost stopped pulsating as she caught, the dull beat of horses' hoofs up the street. Rising, she saw a horseman rein in at the gate at Dwight's. It was Carson; she knew that by the way he dismounted and threw the rein over the gate-post. “Carson!” she called out. “Oh, Carson, I want to see you!” He heard, and came along the sidewalk to meet her at the gate where she now stood. What had come over him? There was an utter droop of despondent weariness upon him, and then as he drew near she saw that his face was pale and haggard. For a moment he stood, his hand on the gate she was holding open, and only stared. “Oh, what has happened?” she cried. “I've been waiting for you. We haven't heard a word.” In a tired, husky voice, for he had made many a speech through the day, he told her of Pete's escape. “He's still hiding somewhere in the mountains,” he said. “Oh, then he may get away after all!” she cried. Dwight said nothing, seeming to avoid her great, staring, anxious eyes. She laid her hand almost unconsciously on his arm.