Doctor St. Clair would have felt himself well avenged for her scorn if he had witnessed that scene, but he had absented himself from the wedding, contenting himself that he had set in motion the adverse influences to wreck the budding happiness of the lovers. The women all flung themselves down by unconscious Eva, and the officers hurried Doctor Ludington away, scarcely giving him time for a word with the few men friends who gave him the hand of sympathy. He attempted no denial of his true identity. What was the use? Eva was lost to him forever. Nothing else mattered much. On the one hand had stood home, kindred, wealth--for the Ludingtons had struck oil, too, and were fast getting rich--but he had been willing to sacrifice them all for the little dark-eyed girl on the other side. Fate had snatched her away, and given him back what he had forsaken. A telegram went flying to his father confessing all; then he started with the officers on a journey to Clarksburg that was to end in prison instead of bridal happiness. CHAPTER XXII. DOCTOR ST. CLAIR’S CLUE. It was the oil excitement that took Doctor St. Clair up into Harrison County. He hoped to buy or lease some land in the famous oil belt. The ferryman at whose shanty Doctor Ludington had stayed, after his lucky escape from death, owned fifteen sterile acres quite near to Fernside and Stony Ledge, but he refused Doctor St. Clair’s offer of two thousand dollars down pointblank. “I ain’t as green as I look, stranger,” he said brusquely. “Why, a man that stayed with me a while last fall, and knowed the right vally of all that land, told me whatever I done, never to sell for less than ten thousand dollars!” “Who was the man?” demanded the doctor, with an inward anathema against the intermeddler. “Friend o’ mine,” briefly. The doctor sneered. “Well, I should like to talk to him and convince him of his mistake. He must be crazy, I think, setting such an undue value on these rocky acres!” “He’s not in the neighborhood now. I don’t know where he went to when he left here,” returned the ferryman, going out abruptly to answer a call for a boat. “Some ignorant tramp likely, that did not know what he was talking about,” the doctor sneered to the ferryman’s wife, venting his spite on the absent offender for spoiling a good trade. “No, I don’t think he were a tramp. He were dressed in fine new clothes, though soakin’ wet with the snow the night we found him lyin’ like a dead man out in the back yard, the time o’ the turble storm,” she replied coldly. “Drunk, maybe,” sniffed the resentful doctor. “No, nor drunk, neither, I don’t believe. He were sick and wounded, with a shot through his breast. A long time he laid here sick, and me and my ole man nussed him like our own son, and said nothing to nobuddy, acause the young feller ast us not. He didn’t want folks to know as he had been in that scrimmage! My, what am I blabbing about now?” cried the woman, suddenly cutting herself short.