Three days--four--and five passed without a message of any sort from the traveler. Acting under Miss Clark’s orders, and her instructions were insistent, the occupants of the big house told no one, save the doctor, of Townsend’s mysterious and alarming absence. But few had seen him take the train at the station, and, as he bought no ticket, they took it for granted that he had gone but a little way, probably to Ostable, and that Varunas was to drive to that town later in the day and bring him home. Foster Townsend’s daily doings were no longer a matter of overwhelming importance to Harniss in general. His losing the lawsuit was an old story. The big mogul was shorn of most of his bigness. It did not now matter greatly what he did. In his own home, however, there was increasing worry and a growing fear. Nabby declared that she was so nervous she couldn’t keep her mind on her work. “I’ll p’ison us all some of these meals,” she said. “I give the cat mashed turnip yesterday and ’twan’t till the critter turned up his nose at it that I found I was puttin’ raw liver on the dinner table.” Varunas was quite as distraught. Reliance Clark was more composed, but she was very anxious. On the morning of the sixth day came a telegram. It was addressed to Mr. Gifford. “Meet me with the team at the South Denboro station seven ten to-night,” it read. Why he should have chosen to alight at South Denboro instead of keeping on to Harniss no one of the three could understand, but the fact that he was still alive was reassuring. Varunas and the horse and buggy were on hand a half hour ahead of the time set. At a little before nine Foster Townsend reëntered his own dining room. Nabby had expected to meet a physical wreck, a pale and haggard shadow whose one desire would be to be helped to bed as soon as possible. Her eyes and mouth opened in astonishment. “Well, I declare, Cap’n Foster!” she gasped. “I do declare! I snum if you ain’t--I do believe you look _better_ than you done when you went out of this house.” Townsend smiled. “I am better,” he said. “Nothing like travel, Nabby.” In spite of her questions and Reliance’s when, later on, the latter came back from the post office, he would not disclose one atom of information as to where he had been so long or why. “Never you mind,” he insisted, and with surprising good nature. “That’s my business. I am not married to either one of you. I am free and independent. I guess likely I can go off on a spree if I want to without doing my catechism afterwards. I have had a good time and maybe I’ll have a better one by and by. You be satisfied with that.” They had to be. Neither then, nor the following day, nor the day after that, would he say more. It was tantalizing to the Giffords, but Reliance did not mind so much. She was grave and preoccupied nowadays and Nabby and her husband thought they understood the reason. Captain Townsend, apparently, did not notice her gravity or long intervals of silence.