The bar-room was crowded with passengers for the cars going west, so, an unnoticed guest, he awaited with growing impatience the keeping of his appointment. Half suspecting that the man's object was to keep him back, and make him lose the train, his impatience and vexation knew no bounds, as the hour slowly waned and no one appeared. The train came rushing through the town, paused a moment, and rushed on, and his last chance for that day had passed. For one moment he had resolved to defy his persecutor, and escape him once and forever; but he knew that before another sunset his secret would be published, and what was this vexation to that ruin? As the crowd hurried from the tavern to the ears, a horseman had alighted at the door, and Victor shrunk back with a guilty feeling of humiliation and fear as he recognized Mr. Rutledge. What a degrading bondage was this for a man of honor--what a damnable humiliation! To be skulking away from the man whom, a few hours ago, he had met as his host and his equal. To be waiting submissively the pleasure of a low villain, whose greedy cunning and mean rascality marked him below the revenge of a gentleman. "It shall end," muttered Victor, between his teeth, as he screened himself from the sight of the new comer, who had entered the bar-room. He was engaged for several minutes in conversation with the bar-keeper, left a message for a neighboring workman, paid a bill for the cartage of some timber, and was about leaving the room, when his eye fell upon a note that was lying on a table near the door; and Victor's dark cheek mantled with shame and vexation, as, taking it up, Mr. Rutledge read, in a tone of surprise: "Mr. Victor Viennet. To be left at the Brandon Shades." "When was this brought here?" he inquired of the man behind the bar. "This morning, sir, I think," he returned. "A man from your village came with it--a dark, thick-set fellow, if I'm not mistaken; one of the hands from the factory." "And no one has called for it--no one answering to that name has been here?" "Not to my knowledge, sir." Mr. Rutledge knit his brow, and paced the floor uneasily. The haughty curl of his lip, as he glanced again at the note, made the blood boil in Victor's veins. It was almost impossible to keep back the defiant words that rushed to his lips; but detection would be fatal now, and he remained motionless, while Mr. Rutledge, crossing over to the barkeeper, said, in a lower tone: "You will oblige me by noticing who comes for that note, and by what way he returns. I will stop here on my return from Renwick, before night."