"Excuse me, Doctor, for telling the story myself," said the farmer, interrupting. "Altercation is not the word--it was a _fight_. The devil was in me, I suppose, and I insulted Carlton Brand like a fool, and dared him to get off his horse to fight me. He got off, we exchanged a few blows, and directly he knocked me stiff. Perhaps I hit him in some unlucky place at the same time--I do not know. All that I do know is, that when I got my senses again, he lay stiff as a poker there on the grass. I thought him dead or dying, and rode away on his horse for the doctor. When we got here, just a moment ago, the body, or Mr. Carlton Brand with the life in him--the Lord knows which!--was gone." "My son got off his horse to fight you, you say?" asked Robert Brand, in such a tone of interest as almost seemed to be exulting. "Yes, sir," answered the farmer. "And actually fought you?--do not tell me a falsehood on this point, young man, for your life!" "Fought me? yes, he did more than that--_whipped_ me; and I do not let myself be whipped every day. If I ever found strength to rise again, I was just going to own up beat and ask his pardon." From that moment, an expression of pain which had been perceptible on Robert Brand's face from the instant of his conversation with Dr. Pomeroy, changed in its character and lightened up, so to speak, if it did not entirely depart. "Not so total and abject a poltroon as I feared!" was his thought. He had not alighted from the carriage, his crippled limb making that step difficult; but leaning over the side of it, he saw something on the grass reminding him of what Kitty had alleged. "There is blood upon the grass--whose is it?--my son's?" he asked. "Mine, every drop of it--out of my nose. See, here is the rest of it," answered Dick Compton, drawing from his pocket the bloody handkerchief with which he had tried to improve the appearance of his countenance, while riding away after the doctor. "What do you make of all this, Doctor?" at length asked Robert Brand. "It puzzles me, of course," said the medical man. "It is strange how Mr. Brand should have fallen for dead, if he was not. And yet it is not likely that any one would have taken up the body and carried it away, if he was. It would seem most probable that--" "That he is still alive?" "That his apparent death was only the result of a fit of some character, and that, coming to after Mr. Compton left, and missing his horse, he has gone homeward, or in some other direction, on foot." "So I should think," answered the father. "Stephen, drive me home again. If you should hear any thing further, Doctor--" "I will do myself the honor of letting you know immediately," answered the young physician, with a bow and a quiet consciousness that, from stress of circumstances, the man whom he yet hoped to call father-in-law, had at last given him a tacit invitation to come to his house on _his_ business. "And what shall I do with the horse?" asked Compton.