Kenneth and Martin were now at her side, and he explained the situation to them all. "I was afraid you might come in at the front door and be seen by him," Charles said. "You see, he may not go to sleep easily, and--" "I was going in that way," Mary broke in. "He would have caught me, and I would have had to tell the truth. He mustn't know the boys are here. The truth is, I am a little bit more afraid of him than I was. He--he holds everything over me that he finds out. He talks about our marrying more than he did. I can get in by the back stairs, and I'll go up very soon. Don't wait, Mr. Brown. He is sure to lie awake till you return. Lock the door after you. Don't remove your shoes this time. Show him that you don't care what he thinks." Charles found the way clear for him on his return, and as he passed Frazier's room he noticed that the door was closed; he heard no sounds within. "_Show him that you don't care what he thinks!_" Mary's last words were ringing in his ears. Somehow they were the sweetest words he had ever heard. They warmed, thrilled, encouraged him. He took them to sleep with him. They followed him through strange turbulent dreams that night. They were back of his first waking thoughts the next morning. "_Show him that you don't care what he thinks!_" He could have sung the words to the accompaniment of the rising sunlight as it bathed the fields in yellow. With them she had thanked him for the service he had rendered, and the service had been her protection against that particular individual. Marry him? Could she marry a man she feared? And yet she had said she would under certain conditions, and the conditions were on the way to fulfilment. Great God! how could it be? His short-lived hope was gone; the music of her magic words had ceased. He heard the clatter of Frazier's boots in his bed-chamber. As he passed down the steps, he heard the burly guest emptying soiled water from his wash-bowl out of a window upon the shrubbery below. How he hated the man! CHAPTER XVI A few days later Mary left on horseback immediately after breakfast. From Rowland, Charles learned that she was going to see certain persons who owned near-by farms, with the hope of borrowing money for the removal of the wounded man to Atlanta and for his treatment there by the famous surgeon, Doctor Elliot. Charles was at work, hoeing corn, when from the thicket bordering the field Kenneth and Martin stealthily emerged and joined him, having crept around from the barn.