And then not waiting for the closing of the service, and forgetting his hat, Uncle Ambrose passed on down the church aisle, where room was instantly made for him, out into the white stillness of the autumn night, away from calumny and human irritation, and the little congregation seeing him go with a look of added dignity and peace, whatever their former ill-founded suspicions, after to-night believed nothing against him. CHAPTER XVIII INDIAN SUMMER TRUTH is immortal, and one truth is that there cannot be two pursuers in the game of love. After the night of the first revival service Uncle Ambrose, making no further visits to the Red Farm, it was the woman who set herself to lure him back again. In the first place, he had by then convinced her that her mistrust had been unjust and that she had listened to suggestion that was not evidence. So there was but one way by which the widow felt she could make reparation and restore peace between herself and Ambrose Thompson. She must find out the name of Sam's father, for necessarily the boy had to have two parents, and the mother she had known as she had come frequently to the farm on visits to her son up to the time of her death. The original informant mentioned in the Bible was a female: "And the damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things." Therefore after a certain period of effort the boy Sam himself drove one afternoon into Pennyroyal bearing three perfumed notes written by the widow which he was to carefully deliver at the post-office. The next afternoon, along about four o'clock, three men appearing in the village street at almost the same time were seen to start off in the direction of the Widow Tarwater's farm. Not that they were together, certainly not; for some little time they were even unconscious of each other's destination. Ambrose, however, made the discovery first, since owing to the enfeebled condition of his livery-stable horse and the disabled state of his prehistoric gig he was compelled to be in the rear of the procession, which was headed by the Honorable Calvin on a high black charger and seconded by the Rev. Mr. Tupper in a neat phaeton drawn by a fat pony. The tall man could have vowed that the best parlour at the Red Farm had not been changed in more than three decades, except that a criminal looking portrait done in crayons of the Widow Tarwater's late husband, who had been an uncommonly handsome man, hung over the mantel, for there in the same dark corner and on the identical sofa sat Peachy, but a far more flushed and emotional Peachy than her former admirer recalled.