"You see to it," she returned listlessly; "you have my name on that paper, the power of something or other." She was seated on the porch of their dwelling. A low-drifting mass of formless grey cloud filled the narrow opening of the ranges, drooping in nebulous veils of suspended moisture down to the vivid green of the valley. The mountains seemed to dissolve into the nothingness above; the stream was unusually noisy. "I might see him this evening," he observed; "and I could find out how Buck was resting." "However did he come to get hurt?" "I never knew rightly, there we were all standing with Buckley a-talking, when the stone flew out of the crowd and hit him on the head. Nobody saw who did it." "I wish you hadn't been there, Gordon. You always seem to be around, to get talked about, when anything happens." He saw that she was irritable, in a mood for complaint, and he rose. "You mean Mrs. Caley talks wherever I am," he corrected. He left the porch and walked over the road to the village. The store, he knew, would be closed; but Valentine Simmons, an indefatigable church worker, almost invariably after the service pleasantly passed the remainder of Sunday in the contemplation and balancing of his long and satisfactory accounts and assets. He was, as Gordon had anticipated, in the enclosed office bent over his ledgers. The door to the store was unlocked. Simmons rose, and briefly acknowledged Gordon's presence. "I was sorry Buckley got hurt," the latter opened; "it wasn't any direct fault of mine. We were having words. I don't deny but that it might have gone further with us, but some one else stepped in." "So I was informed. Buckley will probably live ... that is all the Stenton doctor will say; a piece of his skull has been removed. I am not prepared to discuss it right now ... painful to me." "Certainly. But I didn't come to discuss that. I want to talk to you about the timber--those options of Lettice's." "She doesn't agree to the deal?" Simmons queried sharply. "Whatever I say is good enough for Lettice," Gordon replied. An expression of relief settled over the other. "The papers will be ready this week," he said. "I have taken all that, and some expense, off you. You will make a nice thing out of it." "I will," Gordon assented heartily. "And that reminds me--I saw an old acquaintance of Pompey Hollidew's in Greenstream to-day. I don't know his name; I drove him up in the stage, and Pompey greeted him like a long-lost dollar." A veiled, alert curiosity was plain on Simmons's smooth, pinkish countenance. "I wonder if you know him too?--a man with a beard, a great hand for maps and cigars." "Well?" Valentine Simmons temporized. "Could he have anything to do with those timber options of the old man's, with your offer for them?" "Well?" Simmons repeated. His face was now absolutely blank; he sat turned from his ledgers, facing Gordon, without a tremor.