"Do? Well, I wouldn't like to tell ye."
"Does he work at anything, I mean?"
"Not a tap. He depends upon his dad fer a livin'. See what he did this mornin'. Instead of stayin' home an' lookin' after the hayin', he went to the city. That's what he's always doin'; runnin' away when there's work to be done."
"He was home yesterday, was he not?"
"Y'bet yer life he was, especially in the evenin'. He's ginerally around about that time."
"Why?"
"Oh, he's struck on the old professor's daughter. Her father doesn't like the Stubbles crowd, an' so Ben sneaks around there after he's in bed."
"Isn't it strange that the professor's daughter would do such a thing?"
"Now ye've got me," and the teamster gave a savage thrust at a forkful of hay Douglas had just handed up. "The whole thing is a mystery. Nell's as fine a girl as ever wore shoe-leather, an' why she meets that feller in the evenin' beats me."
Douglas made no reply to these words, but went on quietly with his work. So it was Ben Stubbles who met Nell Strong every night by the old tree! Surely she must know something about his life if what the teamster had just told him were true. He could not understand it. She did not seem like a woman who would have anything to do with such a worthless character. And yet she was meeting him regularly, and at the game time deceiving her blind old father.