“If Sandy is safe in Jersey, or down on the Eastern Shore, that would do no good. It isn't enough that he leaves us alone, from this time on; he has a heavy back-score to settle.”
“Come to think on it, Gilbert,” Mark continued, “isn't it rather queer that you and him should be thrown together in such ways? There was Barton's fox-chase last spring; then your shootin' at other, at the Square; and then the robbery on the road. It seems to me as if he picked you out to follow you, and yet I don't know why.”
Gilbert started. Mark's words reawakened the dark, incredible suspicion which Martha Deane had removed. Again he declared to himself that he would not entertain the thought, but he could not reject the evidence that there was something more than accident in all these encounters. If any one besides Sandy Flash were responsible for the last meeting, it must be Alfred Barton. The latter, therefore, owed him an explanation, and he would demand it.
When they reached the top of the “big hill” north of the Fairthorn farm-house, whence they looked eastward down the sloping corn-field which had been the scene of the husking-frolic, Mark turned to Gilbert with an honest blush all over his face, and said,—
“I don't see why you shouldn't know it, Gilbert. I'm sure Sally wouldn't care; you're almost like a brother to her.”
“What?” Gilbert asked, yet with a quick suspicion of the coming intelligence.
“Oh, I guess you know, well enough, old fellow. I asked her that night, and it's all right between us. What do you say to it, now?”
“Mark, I'm glad of it; I wish you joy, with all my heart!” Gilbert stretched out his hand, and as he turned and looked squarely into Mark's half-bashful yet wholly happy face, he remembered Martha's words, at their last interview.
“You are like a brother to me, Mark,” he said, “and you shall have my secret. What would you say if I had done the same thing?”
“No?” Mark exclaimed; “who?”