Not a bit of hurt had come to the miller externally, and more than a little good internally, but there were altogether too many boys in that “secret” for it to keep any length of time. CHAPTER III MEETING OLD ASSOCIATES It was nearly a week after the beginning of Bar Vernon’s “new time,” and he had never enjoyed anything so thoroughly in all his life, that he returned to his hotel from one of his pleasure trips. By this time he had struck up a sort of an acquaintance with the clerk, although that gentleman confessed to himself that he had never before fallen in with a boy of that age who behaved so very well and talked so very little. “Mr. Vernon,” he said to our hero, that afternoon, “there’s been a gentleman in to see you twice while you were gone--a Major Montague.” “Sorry to hear that,” said Bar. “Why so? He seems a well got-up, rather fine-looking man.” “Can’t help that,” said Bar. “Claimed to be a relative of yours, and seemed quite anxious to see you.” “So he is, I suppose,” replied our hero, “but he’s a disreputable old fellow, for all that, and I’m sure my father would not wish me to have anything to do with him. Drinks like a fish.” “Must say he looks a little on that order,” remarked the clerk. “So we’re not to put him on your track?” “Not if you can help it,” said Bar, carelessly. “The family doesn’t recognize him at all, and I don’t want to.” Bar was perfectly sure, in his own mind, that he was telling the exact truth, but it was the first mention he had made of father or family, and, while it made his heart and fingers tingle very curiously and pleasantly, it did not by any means diminish the respect with which he was regarded, for the keen-eyed official was the last man in the world to be taken in by such a face as that of Major Montague. He had read him through and through at a glance, and had wondered what he could have to do with a quiet, self-respecting young gentleman like Barnaby Vernon. Bar strolled away into the reading-room, muttering to himself: “So he has hunted me up. Saw my name on the hotel register, most likely. Now, I’ll have to get away from this. He’d be sure to make trouble for me. Then he belongs to that horrid old time, and I don’t want anything to do with it. Somehow, I feel as if something were about to happen to me, and I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. Guess I’ll go on an exploring tour, but I’ll fix it so none of that set’ll know me if I come across ’em.” No doubt there had been something of theatrical experience in Barnaby’s “old time,” for he seemed to know precisely what to do. He walked out of the hotel in a very decent suit, of which the coat and waistcoat were dark, and the trousers light-gray, but before he had gone a block, he had bought and put on a loose linen duster. Then at a hat-store he purchased a high black silk “stove-pipe,” to replace the straw he had been wearing.