He looked into the mirror, and hardly knew the image reflected there, so pale and bloodless were his cheeks.
“I look badly,” he said, to himself, “but it will pass off. As to that man, the world is well rid of him, and so am I. He should not have tried to blackmail me. I never should have got rid of him if——”
He did not finish the sentence, but with a nervous shudder sought his bed. He slept at last, but it was a troubled sleep, that gave him no refreshment.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BARN LOFT.
WAS DARIUS DARKE really burned to death in the old barn assigned him as a resting-place?
So Squire Simpson thought, but he was mistaken.
When John Simpson went back to the house the tramp climbed up on the loft and lay down on the hay.
It was a comfortable place, far more comfortable than many in which he had been compelled to lodge, but it did not please him.
“Why,” he asked himself, “should John Simpson pass by his comfortable stable and put me in this out-of-the-way barn? I have fallen pretty low, it is true, but I still think a stable is not too good a place for me. What! what is that?”