"Are you Daniel Butterworth?" asked Charles.
"I am," said Dan, eying him keenly.
"Are you the one"—Charles was going to say "boy," but that did not seem to apply exactly to this grave young fellow—"are you the one who carried the teacher's baggage to the stage-coach when she went away so suddenly?"
Charles had studied the question carefully. He did not know by what name Dawn had gone, whether she had used his or kept her own maiden name, or had assumed still another. He would not cast a shadow of reflection upon her, or risk his chance of finding her by using the wrong name, therefore he called her "the teacher." On inquiring about her at the inn where the stage-coach stopped, he had been referred at once to Peggy Gillette, who immediately guided him to the point in the road where he could see the Butterworth house.
Daniel started, and looked the stranger over suspiciously. There was a something about this clean-faced, long, strong fellow that reminded him a little, just a very little, of the scoundrel who had frightened the teacher away; yet he instinctively liked this man, and felt that he was to be trusted. Rags, too, generally suspicious of strangers, had been smelling and snuffing about this man, and now stood wagging his tail with a smile on his homely, shaggy face. Rags's judgment was generally to be trusted.
"I might be," responded Daniel slowly, "and then again I mightn't. Who are you?"
Charles understood that the boy was testing him, and he liked him the better for it. His heart warmed toward the one who had protected Dawn.
"That's all right," responded Charles heartily. "I'm ready to identify myself. I'm one who loves her better than my life, and I've done nothing for a year but search for her."
He let Daniel see the depth of his meaning in his eyes, as the boy looked keenly, wistfully, into his face. Daniel was satisfied, and with a great sigh of renunciation, he said:
"I knew it, I told her so. I knew you would be half crazy, hunting her. You're the one she said she belonged to, aren't you?"