"Why should you have?" Miriam crisply wanted to know.
"Oh, I don't know," she mused. "Only I thought he might be interested.
You don't seem to realize that we are--very old friends!"
And long after Barbara was sound asleep, her face buried in the palm of
one hand, Miriam Burrell lay stiffly awake. Once she smiled a little,
for such perplexities which, of themselves, must work out inevitably.
When dawn came it found her still struggling stubbornly with her own,
for which it seemed there could be no solution now.
CHAPTER VIII
GREETINGS, SIR GALLAHAD!
It was late that night when Steve climbed into the rig which was
waiting with Pat Joe at the reins and they turned north into the hills.
For he had remained with Caleb and Miss Sarah long after the logs in
the fireplace had crumbled away to a flaky ash, discussing that
ink-smeared record which Caleb himself had ridden to find, ten years
before, in the shack up-river. And the latter was surprised at
learning how much of it was no longer news.
"Yes, I know," Steve told them, after Caleb had finished relating, with
quite ponderous pride, many things which he ascertained concerning the
Stephen O'Mara who had gone before. "I know! Four or five years ago,
when I found out that it was--customary for one to be certain as to
such things, I started to look it up myself. And when I found out from
the records that a boy by that name had disappeared--perhaps been
stolen by an old servant--I remembered instantly, of course, the box
over which Old Tom used to hang, hour after hour.
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