Nettie Harding looked up at him confidentially. “It’s a thing I wouldn’t tell everybody, and if I did I shouldn’t be believed,” she said. “Well, Cyrus Harding can see ever so far ahead, and I never knew him mistaken yet. Some day something will happen in Cuba that will give us an excuse for turning the Spaniards out and straightening things up. They need it.”
“But if the thing doesn’t happen?”
Nettie Harding laughed. “Then I shouldn’t wonder if he and a few other men made it.”
Some of her companions joined them, and she said nothing more to Appleby; but they met again that evening, and she induced him to promise that he would spend at least one day at Glenwood, while when they disembarked in New York Harding walked down the gangway with his hand on Appleby’s shoulder as though on excellent terms with him. He also kept him in conversation during the Customs searching, and when a little unobtrusive man sauntered by said to the officer, “Can’t you go through this gentleman’s baggage next? He is coming to Glenwood with me.”
The unobtrusive man drew a little nearer, glancing at Appleby, and then touched Harding’s shoulder.
“Is that gentleman a friend of yours, Mr. Harding?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Harding. “He is staying with me. We have business on hand we couldn’t fix up at sea.”
Appleby caught his warning glance, and stood very still with his heart thumping, apparently gazing at something across the shed, go that the man could only see the back of his head.
“In that case, I guess I’m wasting time,” said the man, who laughed. “Still, you understand we have to take precautions, Mr. Harding.”
He went away, and Appleby turned to Harding with a little flush in his face as he asked, “Who is that man?”