Shoulders slumped forward, head hanging low, he wheeled on heel and started for the gap in the hedge. Caleb could not move, nor did Allison, whose wits were quick enough in most things. But Garry Devereau followed and overtook his friend. He did not speak to him; he merely dropped one hand upon his drooping shoulders. And yet the men, had they talked for an hour, could not have conveyed all that there was in that second of contact. For it proved electrical in its effect. Steve whirled again and came marching back, head up now--back to the group which had not moved. Straight up to Barbara he went and faced her once again. "I wa'n't good enough to be your knight, was I?" he accused her in a hushed and vibrant voice. "I--I don't know enough, ner I can't talk good enough, to be your knight. I ain't good enough fer you! But I'm a-goin' to be--do you hear? I'm a-goin' to be--an' when I am . . . when I am . . . then I'll come back to you!" This time, rigid as a lance, he disappeared from sight. Caleb stood staring at the ground. Allison stood and stared at the horizon. And when Barbara finally started, white of face and silent, toward the stucco house, Caleb, too, turned and followed his boy home. It was the first time in his memory that he and Dexter Allison had parted in anger, and at that moment Caleb believed that he hated the man and all that was his! Steve had gone straight to his room, but one glimpse of his bloodless face had told Sarah too much and too little. After her brother had explained she would not let him go upstairs to the boy. "It will be better to leave him alone for a while," she said. "It has been coming for days, this thing. I think I knew it would come--but how could we have stopped it, Cal? And you won't believe me, but it's because Barbara Allison cares more for our boy's little finger than she could for a hundred Archie Wickershams that she--she said what she did. Women do those things, and even I, who am a woman, can't tell you why!" Steve did not come downstairs for supper that night, and when he failed to appear at the breakfast hour, both Caleb and Sarah mounted to his room, fear in their hearts. The bed had not been slept in; the sheets were not even disarranged, but there was a scrap of paper pinned to one pillow-slip. It wasn't written in "book language"--that short message--for it was not his brain, but his heart, which had phrased it: I'm a-comin' back--I'm comin' back to you, someday when they won't be no need fer you to be ashamed fer me. I'm takin' my new clothes with me because I knowed you would a-wanted me to--and the shoes, too. I'm askin' you to take keer of Ole Samanthy til I come fer her--and Miss Sarah ain't got no call to worry, fer I could always take keer o' myself. It was signed "Stephen O'Mara." Sarah's face went white when she had read it through. Her knees weakened under her and she had to sit down. "Why, Cal--why, Cal, he's--he's gone," she quavered.