Marshall tried to barricade the entrance to the room beyond the hall by means of his own plump body, and was promptly kicked aside, as the stranger strode past him, bearing the unconscious man upon his shoulder, very much as if he had been a bag of meal. "Is this your master?" "Y-ye-s. Who--are you--ordering--" "Hot water--lights--a doctor--everything--_at once_. I'm Frederic Kaye." CHAPTER XXIII. FREDERIC KAYE'S WELCOME HOME. The excitement at Ardsley was intense. Never had its quiet precincts been disturbed by a crime so unprovoked and dastardly. "To strike a man in the dark." "To waylay an old fellow like that. The man is a coward, whoever he be, that did it." "Poor old 'boss.' He wasn't to say over lovable, in ordinary, but I'd pity even a scoundrel got treated that way." "He ought to be punished with his own stripes." "Oh, he'll get what he deserves. Never fear. If old man Wingate had been poor--well, you might say. But a rich man has friends." Such talk all through the mill, on that day after Christmas, interfered seriously with the customary labor. But it was small wonder; and though he tried to enforce discipline and keep things running smoothly, even Mr. Metcalf himself was greatly disturbed and anxious. The news of the assault upon the mill owner had spread rapidly. At first the story told by the stranger, who had so suddenly and opportunely appeared upon the scene, was given credence. Then, when it was remembered that this stranger, now known to be Frederic Kaye, had been injured and supplanted by Archibald Wingate, a faint suspicion began to rise in men's minds. Only those who have suffered from it know with what terrible rapidity an unjust rumor grows and spreads. Inoculated by this evil germ, even the fairest judgment becomes diseased. Those who had best known Frederic Kaye, the old people who recalled his frank, impetuous, happy-go-lucky boyhood, here in the town where he was born and bred; those who had received good from his hand, and nothing but good; even these joined with the baser sort in considering the night attack upon the mill owner "quite natural. Just what might have been expected." "Of course no one knows what sort of life Kaye's led out there in Californy. The jumping-off place of creation." So, instead of finding himself among friends, the returned citizen discovered that he was among enemies, under the basest of suspicions. He had remained all night at Fairacres, with the doctor so hastily summoned there. This gentleman was an old acquaintance, and from him Mr. Frederic, as he had always been called in distinction from Mr. Kaye, the artist and his brother-in-law, learned the history of the past weeks. Yes, even of years.