"Is the carriage ready?" asked Mr. Willcoxen.
"Then, I believe, we also are--is it not so?"
The police officer bowed, and Mr. Willcoxen walked up to Cloudy and held out his hand.
"Good-by, Cloudy, for the present. Paul will probably be home by nightfall, even if I should be detained."
"Oh, don't hurry yourself upon my account. I shall do very well. Jenny can take care of me," said Cloudy, jovially, as he shook the offered hand of Thurston.
Paul could not trust himself to look Cloudy in the face and say "Good-by." He averted his head, and so followed Mr. Willcoxen and the officer into the yard.
Mr. Willcoxen, the senior officer and Paul Douglass entered the carriage, and the second constable attended on horseback, and so the party set out for Charlotte Hall.
Hour after hour passed. Old Jenny came in and put the supper on the table, and stood presiding over the urn and tea-pot while Cloudy ate his supper. Old Jenny's tongue ran as if she felt obliged to make up in conversation for the absence of the rest of the family.
"Lord knows, I'se glad 'nough you'se comed back," she said; "dis yer place is bad 'nough. Sam's been waystin' here eber since de fam'ly come from de city--dey must o' fetch him long o' dem. Now I do 'spose sumtin is happen long o' Miss Miriam as went heyin' off to de willidge dis mornin' afore she got her brekfas, nobody on de yeth could tell what fur. Now de od-er two is gone, an' nobody lef here to mine de house, 'cept 'tis you an' me! Sam's waystin'!"
Cloudy laughed and tried to cheer her spirits by a gay reply, and then they kept up between them a lively badinage of repartee, in which old Jenny acquitted herself quite as wittily as her young master.
And after supper she cleared away the service, and went to prepare a bed and light a fire in the room appropriated to Cloudy.
It grew late, yet neither Thurston nor Paul appeared. Cloudy began to think their return unseasonably delayed, and at eleven o'clock he took up his lamp to retire to his chamber, when he was startled and arrested by the barking of dogs, and by the rolling of the carriage into the yard, and in a few minutes the door was thrown violently open, and Paul Douglass, pale, haggard, convulsed and despairing, burst suddenly into the room.