"I wonder where the young blackleg's been," said one, peering through the windows. "He'd better have stayed away for good, I'm thinking. What does he want to come back for, to a place where there aren't three men who will take a drink with him?" The reply was as contemptuous. "We get some rare black sheep in the hills!" The voice spoke meaningly. "If I had my way, he'd leave this region almighty quick!" Jessica looked about her an instant wildly, guiltily. She could not be mistaken in the name! Was Hugh here, whither by the veriest accident she had come--here in this very town that she had gazed down upon every day for weeks? _Was he?_ She pressed her cold hands to her colder cheeks. The contempt in the voices had smitten through her like a sword. A revulsion seized her. No, no, it could not be! She had not heard aright. It was only a fancy! But she had an overwhelming desire to satisfy herself with her own eyes. From where she stood she could not see the street. She bethought herself of the upper balcony. Swiftly, on tiptoe, she crossed to the hall door, threw it open, and ran hastily up the stair. CHAPTER XV THE MAN WHO HAD FORGOTTEN If the man who had been the subject of the observations Jessica had heard had been less absorbed, as he walked leisurely along on the opposite side of the street, he would have noticed the look of dislike in the eyes of those he passed. They drew away from him, and one spoke--to no one in particular and with an oath offensive and fervid. But weather-beaten, tanned, indifferently clad, and with a small brown dog following him, the new-comer passed along, oblivious to the sidelong scrutiny. He did not stare about him after the manner of a stranger, though, so far as he knew, he had never been in the place before. So far as he knew--for Harry Sanderson had no memories save those which had begun on a certain day a month before in a box-car. He walked with eyes on the pavement, absorbed in thoughts of his own. But Harry Sanderson now was not the man who had ridden into oblivion in the motor-car. The rector of St. James was in a strange eclipse. Mentally and externally he had reverted to the old Satan Sanderson, of the brilliant flashing originality, of the curt risk and daring. The deeply human and sensitive side, that had developed during his divinity years, was in abeyance; it showed itself only in the affection he bestowed on the little nameless dog that followed him like a brown, shaggy shadow. He was like that old self of his, and yet, if he had but known it, he was wonderfully like some one else, too--some one who had belonged to the long ago and garbled past that still eluded him; some one who had been a part also of the life of this very town, till a little over a month before, when he had left it with dread dogging his footsteps!