He saw the approaching figure; there could be no doubt of that. The cornstalks, all bleached and partially stripped of the wealth of blades that the summer’s suns had drawn out, like a conjurer’s ribbon flaunting from nothingness, to wave in the summer’s winds,—the residue, tattered and mildewed, glittering here and there with the white rime,—came hardly to Jepson’s breast. The broad shoulders of his blue jeans coat showed above the growth; his wide white hat, set far back from his brow, disclosed his features, with their distinctive chiseling. The peculiar pose of his head and his erect carriage were so characteristic that he could hardly be mistaken even at a distance. His eyes were fixed upon the group, and he must have noted Eli Strobe holding to the arms of his chair, his bandaged head bent forward, gazing open-mouthed, with quivering jaw and pallid, stricken face. He certainly saw Marcella, and his step slackened as he watched her suddenly rise and stand behind her father, placing one finger on her lip. She lifted the other hand at arm’s-length, and with a frowning, imperative face she waved him back. He stood motionless for a moment, hesitating and at a loss. Then he walked on slowly, still toward the house. There was a dip in the ground just in front of him,—a marshy spot,—and there the corn had grown tall and rank; so tall that the sere and half-stripped stalks, left to stand stark and dead in the field till the spring burnings and plowings-under should grant them sepulchre, reached higher than Teck Jepson’s head. Eli Strobe, tremulously intent, watched the great white hat disappear behind these relics of the lush crop; he waited motionless, his eyes fixed upon the lower stalks where it should presently emerge. Time went by,—one minute, three, five,—and still Jepson did not reappear. Andy Longwood divined that he had turned aside upon Marcella’s signal, and had taken his way along the furrows between the corn, out of sight, and so to the verge of the field. But this was not the impression made upon the distraught brain of the constable, as, his patience wearying at last and his muscles failing, he sank back into his chair. He looked craftily at the two young people, to judge what effect the apparition—for thus he deemed it—had had upon them; if indeed it had appeared save to his own eyes. In their uncertainty, dealing with the emergency at hap-hazard and as best they might, they unwittingly fostered his delusion. Marcella was calmly spinning once more, and Andy Longwood, taking his cue at last, idly whittled a stick.