"Well, it's time you turned up," he said, when he had slipped cautiously down the staircase and joined him in the yard. "Get your lantern," returned Will, "and come on to the barn. There's something I must see you about at once," and while the other went in search of the light, he stood impatiently uprooting a tuft of grass as he whistled a college song in unsteady tones. At the end of a minute Christopher reappeared, bearing the lantern, which he declared was quite unnecessary because of the rising moon. "Oh, but I must talk indoors," responded Will; "the night makes me creepy--it always did." "So there is something to say, and it's no nonsense? Are the skies about to fall, or has your grandfather got a grip on his temper?" "Pshaw! It's not that. Wait till we get inside." And when they had entered the barn, he turned and carefully closed the door, after flashing the light over the trampled straw in the dusky corners. In the shed outside a new-born calf bleated plaintively, and at the sound he started and broke into an apologetic laugh. "You thought I was joking to-day," he said suddenly. Christopher nodded. "So I presumed," he answered, wondering if drink or love or both together had produced so extreme an agitation. "Well, I wasn't," declared Will, and, placing the lantern on the floor, he raised his head to meet the other's look. "I was as dead in earnest as I am this minute--and if it's the last word I ever speak, I mean to marry Molly Peterkin." His excitable nerves were plainly on the rack of some strong emotion, and as he met the blank amazement in Christopher's face he turned away with a gesture of angry reproach. "Then you're a fool," said Christopher, with a shrug of his shoulders. Will quivered as if the words struck him like a whip. "Because she's Sol Peterkin's daughter?" he burst out. Christopher smiled. "It's not her father, but her character, that I was thinking of," he answered, and the next instant fell back in sheer surprise, for Will, flinging himself recklessly upon him, struck him squarely in the mouth. As they fell breathlessly apart Christopher was conscious that for the first time in his life he felt something like respect for Will Fletcher--or at least for that expression of courageous passion which in the vivid moments of men's lives appears to raise the strong and the weak alike above the ordinary level of their surroundings. For a second he stood swallowing down the anger which the blow aroused in him--an anger as purely physical as the mounting of the hot blood to his cheek--then he looked straight into the other's face and spoke in a pleasant voice. "I beg your pardon; it was all my fault," he said. "I knew you'd see it," answered Will, appeased at once by the confession, "and I counted on you to help us; that's why I came." "To help you?" repeated Christopher, a little startled.