Then suddenly he decided that he would go to Old Chester and say so in person. "I suppose I ought to go, anyhow; I haven't been there for six weeks. Yes; this child is just what she needs." And that was how it came about that when he went home he pulled his daughter Alice's pretty ear and said he was going away that night. "I shall take the ten-o'clock train," he said. His girl--a pleasant, flower-like young creature--scolded him affectionately. "I wish you wouldn't take so many journeys. Promise to be careful; I worry about you when I'm not with you to take care of you," she said, in her sweet, anxious young voice. Her father, smiling, promised prudence, and for the mere joy of watching her let her pack his bag, lecturing him as she did so about his health. "Now that you have undertaken all this extra business of the Pryor-Barr people, you owe it to your stockholders to be careful of your health," she told him, refusing to notice his smile when he solemnly agreed with her. "What would happen to the Company if anything happened to you?" she insisted, rubbing her soft cheek against his. "Ruin, of course." But she would not laugh. "And what would happen to _me_?" "Ah, well, that's a different matter," he admitted, and kissed her and bade _her_ be careful. "What would happen to me if anything happened to you?" he teased. She hung about him, brooding over him like a little mother dove with a hundred questions. "Are you going anywhere except to Mercer?" "Well, yes; possibly." "Where?" "Oh, to a place called Old Chester." "Who are you going to see there?" "Nobody you know, Gas-bag! I never heard of such curiosity!" "Ah, but I like to think about you when you are away, and know just where you are and what you are doing every minute of the time." At which he laughed and kissed her, and was off to take the night train for Mercer, which made it possible for him to catch the morning stage for Old Chester. There was one other passenger in the stage--a little boy with a soft thatch of straight, yellow hair that had been chopped short around the bowl of some domestic barber. He sat on the opposite seat and held a bundle in his arms, peering out over the top of it with serious blue eyes. "Well, young man, where are you bound?" inquired Mr. Pryor. When the child said "Old Chester," Lloyd Pryor tossed a quarter out of the window to a hostler and bade him go into the stage-house and buy an apple. "Here, youngster," he said, when the man handed it up to him, "take that.--Keep the change, my man."