With still no news of Tusk Potter, the Colonel had spent a restless day. Earlier, the doughty son of Shadeland Wildon brought the little boy over to see him, followed by Aunt Timmie in her precarious buggy; but it was now afternoon and they had left. Shadows were lengthening, and the cows were mooing at the pasture gate.
Dale, as usual, had spent the day in study. His absorption had made him unconscious of intruders who came into the room. Timmie and the little boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don' you know you'se gwine pop yoh brains a-wu'kin' 'em so hard?"
Bip, who regarded Dale with mysterious interest, made farther advances. He went up close, and looked wonderingly into his face; but at last both he and the old woman left unseen and unheard.
All unconscious of his surroundings, this student was living in other days with the dauntless Pompey. By the aid of the huge dictionary, now seldom opened, he laboriously followed this daring friend of the great Cicero. Since morning he had witnessed the capture of a thousand cities, the slaying or subjugation of a million human beings—and more of this was to come. Had lightning snapped about his head he would not have known it for the wilder sounds of battlefields, scattered between Rome and the Euphrates, possessing his brain.
When Jane arrived, Mac was properly introduced to the old gentleman, who made a great fuss over him and directed her attention to his points of unusual excellence. But Brent, he told her, was not about.
"Dale would like to see him," she said enthusiastically.
"Oh, yes," his face clouded, "I suppose so!"
"What's the matter?" she quickly asked.
"Matter?" he looked up. "Why, nothing, my dear! Nothing, of course!"
But it did not satisfy, and she asked again: