The best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.--_Francis Bacon_. At ten o'clock I called for a horse and rode out into the night, turning into the country with the intention of following the lake-road to the region I had explored in the launch a few hours before. All was dark at St. Agatha's as I passed. No doubt Helen Holbrook had returned in due course from her visit to her father and, after accounting plausibly to her aunt for her absence, was sleeping the sleep of the just. Now that I thought of the matter in all its bearings, I accused myself for not having gone directly to St. Agatha's from the lonely house on Tippecanoe Creek and waited for her there, demanding an explanation of her perfidy. She was treating Miss Pat infamously: that was plain; and yet in my heart I was excusing and defending her. A family row about money was ugly at best; and an unfortunate--even criminal--father may still have some claim on his child. Then, as against such reasoning, the vision of Miss Pat rose before me--and I felt whatever chivalry there is in me arouse with a rattle of spears. Paul Stoddard, in committing that dear old gentlewoman to my care, had not asked me to fall in love with her niece; so, impatient to be thus swayed between two inclinations, I chirruped to the horse and galloped swiftly over the silent white road. I had learned from the Glenarm stable-boys that it was several miles overland to the Tippecanoe. A Sabbath quiet lay upon the world, and I seemed to be the only person abroad. I rode at a sharp pace through the cool air, rushing by heavy woodlands and broad fields, with an occasional farm-house rising somberly in the moonlight. The road turned gradually, following the line of the lake which now flashed out and then was lost again behind the forest. There is nothing like a gallop to shake the nonsense out of a man, and my spirits rose as the miles sped by. The village of Tippecanoe lay off somewhere in this direction, as guide-posts several times gave warning; and my study of the map on the launch had given me a good idea of the whole region. What I sought was the front entrance of the green cottage above the house-boat by the creek, and when, far beyond Port Annandale, the road turned abruptly away from the lake, I took my bearings and dismounted and tied my horse in a strip of unfenced woodland.