And Caleb nodded down into her stricken face. "Yes--he--he's gone," he breathed. Sarah swallowed hard. Then two bright tears crept out from under her eyelids and went coursing down her cheeks. She rose and groped her way to her own room. Caleb found Barbara Allison waiting in the living-room when he, still numb from the shock, went back downstairs. She came up to him and stood a moment, twisting the fingers of one hand within those of the other. "I want to see Stephen, please, Uncle Cal," she faltered. Caleb drew a deep and unsteady breath. "Steve isn't here, Barbara," he said as gently as he could. The child didn't understand. "Father sent me over to apologize," she explained slowly. "I'm to tell him that I'm sorry. But I--I want to tell him, too, that if I couldn't have him for my knight--I--I wouldn't ever have any knight at all!" Caleb felt a tightening at his throat which made speech difficult. "But Steve has gone away," he managed to gulp. A shadow came into the big dark eyes lifted to his. "He'll be back for breakfast, won't he?" she asked, hopefully. "I'm afraid not, Barbara. I'm afraid now that he may never come back--again." She didn't understand what he meant at first, so Caleb tried to explain. But when his voice broke and trailed off into a husky whisper there was no further need of explanation. She ran then and threw herself in a passion of tears upon a window-seat in the corner. Caleb found his chair. And after a time he felt a small hand touch his sleeve; he felt a wet cheek pressed tight to his own. "Oh, don't you feel so badly, too, Uncle Cal," Barbara sobbed. "Please--please! Because he _is_ coming back! He told me he would--he told me he would, himself!" CHAPTER VI MY MAN O'MARA For a week and more Caleb Hunter scoured the surrounding country. He whipped over the hills in every direction, half hopeful that he might overtake the boy who had gone in the night. But none of the farmers on the outlying roads had seen pass their way a little foot traveler such as he described, and after a time even that small hope died. When Dexter Allison came over the next day, his face far more perturbed than Caleb had ever before seen it by the news which Barbara, in tears, had carried to him, Caleb found that his anger had somehow oozed away during the night. Allison's concern was too genuine to be feigned; and Caleb learned too, that morning, that beneath his neighbor's amusement at the boy there had always been a strain of admiration for his sturdy gravity and more than a bit of wonder at his uncanny knowledge of things which were as sealed books to Dexter. Together the two men searched for Steve, driving in silence through the country, until they both realized that the search was useless. And at last one day in early fall, Caleb started alone upon his errand into that stretch of timber to the north which the boy himself had vaguely designated as "up-river."