The house in these summer days, with the shutters half closed and the doors all open, seemed more retired, more solitary, than when all the busy life of the place was drawn to the focus of the library fire. She was quite alone, as she traversed the hall and sat down to write at the library table. The "ladies" were playing out of doors, close in to the window under a tree. Judge Roscoe had business in the town and walked thither leaning rather heavily on his cane, for no news came of Acrobat, and somehow he no longer cared to ride the glossy iron-gray that Captain Baynell still left grazing in his pastures. So still were all the precincts she feared she might not find a messenger as she went out on the latticed gallery searching for old Ephraim. But there he sat in the sun in front of the kitchen door. He was not wont to be so silent. He said naught when she handed him the missive with her instructions, but he looked unwilling, with a sort of warning wisdom in his expression, and several times turned the note gingerly in his hand, as if he thought it might explode. He would fain have remonstrated against the renewal of communication with the elements that had brought so much disquiet into the calm life of the old house hitherto. But his lips were sealed so far as the "Yankee man" and Julius were concerned. And he would maintain that he had never seen or heard of the grotto till indeed it was blown up. "All dese young folks is a stiff-necked and tarrifyin' generation, an' ef dey will leave ole Ephraim in peace, he p'intedly won't pester dem," he said to himself. Therefore, merely murmuring acquiescence, "Yes'm, yes'm, yes'm," while he received his orders, he put on his hat which he had hitherto held in his hand, and walked off briskly to the tent of the artillery captain. The succinct dignified tone of Mrs. Gwynn's note requesting to see Captain Baynell at his earliest convenience on a matter of business precluded effectually any false sentimental hopes, had any communication from her been calculated to raise them. He was already mounted, having just returned from afternoon parade; and saying to Uncle Ephraim that he would wait on Mrs. Gwynn immediately, he wheeled his horse and forthwith disappeared in the midst of the shadow and sheen of the full-leaved grove. Baynell had changed, changed immeasurably, since she had last seen him. Always quiet and sedate, his gravity had intensified to sternness, his dignified composure to a cold, impenetrable reserve, his attentive interest to a sort of wary vigilance, all giving token of the effect wrought in his mental and moral endowment by the knowledge of the suspicions entertained concerning his actions, and the charges that were being formulated against him.