"Oh, if he was afraid of this young man, this boy," Judson declared, "he would have feared something else; that's it, he'd been afraid of other things."
"Well, what was it, O'mie?" Dr. John queried.
"Ghosts," O'mie replied gravely. "Oh, I know," he declared, as the crowd laughed. "I can prove it to you and tell you all about it. I'll do it some day, but I'll need the schoolhouse and some lantern slides to make it effective. I may charge a small admission fee and give a benefit to defray Bud's expenses home from this trip."
"Would you really do that, O'mie?" Mary Gentry asked him.
But the query, "Where's Phil, now?" was going the rounds, and the answers were many. My doings had not been reported in the town, and gossip still was active concerning me.
"Up at Topeka," "Gone to St. Louis," "Back in Massachusetts." These were followed by Dave Mead's declaration:
"The best boy that ever went out of Springvale. Just his father over again. He'll make some place prouder than it would have been without him."
Nobody knew who started the story just then, but it grew rapidly from Tillhurst's side of the table that I had gone to Rockport, Massachusetts, to settle in my father's old home-town.
"Stands to reason a boy who can live in Kansas would go back to Massachusetts, doesn't it?" Dr. John declared scornfully.
"But Phil's to be married soon, to that stylish Miss Melrose. She's got the money, and Phil would become a fortune. Besides, she was perfectly infatuated with him."
"Well," somebody else asserted, "if he does marry her, he can bring her back here to live. My! but Judge Baronet's home will be a grand place to go to then. It was always good enough."
Amid all this clatter Marjie was as indifferent and self-possessed as if my name were a stranger's. Those who had always known her did not dream of what lay back of that sweet girl-face. She was the belle of Springvale, and she had too many admirers for any suspicion of the truth to find a place.
While the story ran on Bud turned to her and said in a low voice, "Marjie, I'm going to Phil. He needth me now."
Nobody except Bud noticed how white the girl was, as the company rising from the table swept her away from him.
That night Dr. Hemingway's prayer was fervent with love. The boys were always on his heart, and he called us all by name. He prayed for the young men of Springvale, who had grown up to the life here and on whom the cares of citizenship, and the town's good name were soon to rest; and for the young men who would not be with us again: for Tell Mapleson, that the snares of a great city like St. Louis might not entrap him; for James Conlow, whose lines had led him away from us; for David Mead, going soon to the far-away lands where the Sierras dip down the golden slope to the Pacific seas; for August Anderson, also about to go away from us, that life and health might be his; and last of all for Philip Baronet. A deeper hush fell upon the company bowed in prayer.