Horace Townsend, who had been riding the last mile very much like a man in a dream and really with the formal charge of Clara Vanderlyn entirely abandoned to her chosen protector--Horace Townsend heard all this, as if he heard through miles of distance or at a long period of time after the utterance. For his eyes were busy and they absorbed all his sensations. He had recognized, at the first moment of riding up, among the crowd of persons on the piazza, the dark, proud eyes and beautiful face and stately form of Margaret Hayley, leaning on the arm of that man whom he had not by any means learned to love since his advent in the mountains--Captain Hector Coles, V. A. D. C. They had waited clear weather before starting from the Profile, and come through that day while his party had been absent up the mountains: he realized all at a thought, and realized that whatever he was himself to endure of trial lay much nearer than he had before believed. Disguised and indeed disfigured as the lawyer was, in common with all the other members of the cavalcade, to such a degree that only observation and study could penetrate the masquerade,--it was not at all strange that the lady failed to meet his eye with an answering glance of recognition; and he felt rather grateful than the reverse, for the moment, that his disguise was so effectual. While Clara Vanderlyn, a third time within one week the passive heroine of the mountains, was being lifted from her saddle by half a dozen officious hands, and while the rest of the party were gabbling as they alighted,--he slipped quietly from his horse behind one corner of the piazza, threw his rein to one of the stable-boys, and disappeared through the hall, up-stairs to his chamber. He did not again make his appearance until supper was on the tables and the battle of knives-and-forks going on with that vigor born of mountain air. Most of the visitors at the house, the voyagers of the day included, were already seated; and among them was Clara Vanderlyn, apparently no whit the worse for her day's adventure, her brother at one and her mother at the other side. A little further down the table, on the same side, sat Halstead Rowan, occupying the same seat of the evening before. He had evidently dropped back from his familiar standing with the lady, the moment they came within the atmosphere of Mrs. Vanderlyn and the great republic of voices at the Crawford; but quite as evidently he had not yet fallen away from his last-won position as a hero, for his face was continually flushing, as he ate, with the modesty of a girl's, when the whispers and nods and pointings of interest and admiration were made so plain that they reached his eye and ear. The adventure of the day was undeniably the topic of the evening, and Halstead Rowan was the hero; and it may be imagined how much this knowledge and the inevitable corollary that some one else was _not_ the hero, added to the comfort of the late-comer at table.