"Who are you?" Gabriel asked.
"One," replied the other.
"I don't know your voice," said Gabriel; "how did you know me?"
"That is a secret that belongs to the Knights of the White Camellia," answered the unknown. "If you don't come down, I'm afraid I'll have to shake you out of that tree. Can't you slide down without hurting your feelings?"
Gabriel slid down the trunk of the small tree as quickly as he could, and found that the owner of the voice was no other than Major Tomlin Perdue, of Halcyondale.
"You didn't expect to find me roosting around out here, did you?" the irrepressible Major asked, as he shook Gabriel warmly by the hand. "Well, I fully expected to find you. Your grandmother told me an hour ago that I'd find you mooning about on the hills back there. I didn't find you because I didn't care to go about bawling your name; so I came around by the road. I was loafing around here when you came up, and I knew it was you, as soon as I heard you slipping up that tree. But that hill business, and the mooning—how about them? You're in love, I reckon. Well, I don't blame you. She's a fine gal, ain't she?"
"Who?" inquired Gabriel.
"Who!" cried Major Perdue, mockingly. "Why, there's but one gal in the Dale. You know that as well as I do. She never has had her match, and she'll never have one. And it's funny, too; no matter which way you spell her first name, backwards or forwards, it spells the same. Did you ever think of that, Tolliver? But for Vallic—you know my daughter, don't you?—I never would have found it out in the world."
Gabriel laughed somewhat sheepishly, wondering all the time how Major Perdue could think and talk of such trivial matters, in the face of the spectacle they had just witnessed.
"Well, you deserve good luck, my boy," the Major went on. "Everybody that knows you is singing your praises—some for your book-learning, some for your modesty, and some for the way you ferreted out the designs of that fellow who was last to leave the church."