Mildred came home first and was not accompanied by Hugh, as Mrs. Kinloch had hoped. He had not found her, then,--perhaps he had not sought for her. Next Lucy returned, coming through the garden which stretched up the hill. Being questioned, she answered that she had been to her grandmother's, and had come back the nearest way over the hill, through the woods. "What had she gone for after the fatigue of washing-day?" "Because Squire Clamp, who owned the house her grandmother lived in, wanted her to take a message." Mrs. Kinloch began to become interested. "Squire Clamp!" she exclaimed,--"when did you see him?" "He called here yesterday evening,--on his way to Mr. Hardwick's, I guess." "Why didn't he ask _me_ if you could go? I think he's pretty free to send my girls about the town on his errands." "You were out, Ma'am,--in the next house; and after he'd gone I forgot it." "You remembered it to-day, it seems." "Yes'm; after dinner I thought of it and hurried right off; but granny was sick and foolish, and didn't want to let me come away, so I couldn't get back as quick as I meant to." "Well, you can go to the kitchen." "Yes'm." "I must keep an eye on that girl," thought Mrs. Kinloch. "She is easily persuaded, fickle, without strong sense, and with only a very shallow kind of cunning. She might do mischief. What can Squire Clamp want? The old hovel her grandmother lives in isn't worth fifty dollars. Whatever has been going on, I'm glad Hugh is not mixed up in it." Just then Hugh rode up, and, tying his horse, came in. He seemed to have lost something of the gayety of the morning. "I am tired," he said. "I had to get off and lead the pony down the hill, and it's steep and stony enough." "There are pleasant roads enough in the neighborhood," said his mother, "without your being obliged to take to the woods and clamber over the mountains." "I know it," he replied; "but I had been up towards the Allen place, and I took a notion to come back over the hill." "Then you passed Lucy's house?" "Yes. The bridle-path leads down the hill about a mile above this; but on foot one may keep along the ridge and come down into the valley through our garden." "So I suppose; in fact, I believe Lucy has just returned that way." "Indeed! it's strange I didn't see her." "It is strange." Hugh bore the quiet scrutiny well, and his mother came to the conclusion that the girl had told the truth about her going for the lawyer. Presently Mildred came down from her room, and after a few minutes Mrs. Kinloch went out, casting a fixed and meaning look at her son. She seemed as impatient for the issue of her scheme, as the child who, after planting a seed, waits for the green shoot, and twice a day digs down to see if it has not sprouted. Mildred, as the reader may suppose, was not likely to be very agreeable to her companion; the recollections of the day were too vivid, too delicious.