After a time I became aware that someone was overtaking me, and waited, thinking at first it would be one of my people. But it wasn't long before I recognised from the quick tempo of the approaching footfalls that this was no Radvillian. There was just light enough--starlight striking down through the thinner spaces in the interlacing foliage--to make visible a moving shadow, and when it drew nearer I saluted it with confidence. "Good-evening, Mr. Duncan." He stopped short, peering through the gloom. "Good-evening, but--Mr. Littlejohn? Glad to see you." He joined me and we proceeded homeward, he moderating his stride a trifle in deference to my age. "Aren't you late?" "A bit," I admitted. "I've been gossiping with Sam Graham." "Oh...?" "You're out late yourself, Mr. Duncan, for one of such regular, not to say abnormal, habits." He laughed lightly. "Had a letter I wanted to catch the first morning train." "Then you're interested in Sam's burner?" "No, I'm not, but I hope to interest others....Oh, yes: Mr. Graham told you about it, of course.... It just struck me that if a man of Burnham's stamp was willing to risk five hundred dollars on the proposition, he very likely foresaw a profit in it that might as well be Mr. Graham's. So I've sent a detailed description of the thing to a friend in New York, who'll look into it for me." He was silent for a little. "Who's Colonel Bohun?" he asked suddenly. "Why do you ask?" "I saw him this evening. He was passing the store and stopped to glare in as if he hated it--stopped so long that I got nervous and asked Miss Lockwood (she'd just happened in for a parting glass--of soda) whether he was an anarchist or a retired burglar. She told me his name, but was otherwise inhumanly reticent." "For Josie?" I chuckled; but he didn't respond. So I took up the tale of the first family of Radville. "The story runs," said I, "that the Bohuns were one of the F.F.V.'s; that they sickened of slavery, freed their slaves and moved North, to settle in Radville. I _believe_ they came from somewhere round Lynchburg; but that was a couple of generations ago. When the Civil War broke out the old Colonel up there"--I gestured vaguely in the general direction of the Bohun mansion--"couldn't keep out of it, and naturally he couldn't fight with the North. He won his spurs under Lee.... After the war had blown over he came home, to find that his only son had enlisted with the Radville company and disappeared at Gettysburg. It pretty nearly killed the old man--though he wasn't so old then; but there's fire in the Bohun blood, and his boy's action seemed to him nothing less than treason." "And that's what soured him on the world?"