“To my house.”
“All right, then. The crowd's spoiling the whole business. I've got an address of welcome in my pocket that I was to have delivered, and there's to be a supper at the Rink to-night. Don't let him get away from you.”
Meanwhile, Dan had succeeded in extricating himself from the clutches of his friends, and was struggling towards a closed carriage at the end of the platform that he recognized as the Emorys'.
In his haste and the dusk of the dull October twilight, he supposed the figure he saw in the carriage to be the doctor, who had preceded him, and called to the man on the box to drive home.
As he settled himself, he said, reproachfully:
“I hope you hadn't anything to do with this?”
A slim, gloved hand was placed in his own, and a laughing voice said:
“How do you do, Mr. Oakley?”
He glanced up quickly, and found himself face to face with Constance Emory.
There was a moment's silence, and then Dan said, the courage that had brought him all the way to Antioch suddenly deserting him: “It's too bad, isn't it? I had hoped I could slip in and out of town without any one being the wiser.”