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loneliness seized him. He stared up at the distant lights, and a bright star caught and held his eyes. He thought Nessie, gazing out of her car window on the northbound train, might also be looking at this shining star. He hoped she was, and that she grieved for him as he was grieving for her.

A motor car thrumming somewhere in the darkness behind him aroused Abner from his reverie. The machine drew closer, and presently a beam of light flickered past the teamster, making the road ahead of him visible in sharp blacks and whites. Without glancing around Abner got to one side to allow the motor to pass, when to his surprise there came a rasping of the brakes and the car came to a halt behind him. The teamster looked around into the dazzling headlight just as a voice called out sharply, "Hey, there, Ab Teeftaller, stop there, will ye?"

The menacing tone, the unusualness of a motor stopping behind a man on foot, sent a tang of apprehension and anger through the youth. He flung back over his shoulder the usual hill snarl, "Go to hell," and continued his plodding.

The next moment a shotgun roared behind him and the load splashed into the roadbed a few yards in front of him. In the ringing silence that followed another voice ordered, "Now, damn ye, stop, or do you want us to stop ye?"

Abner whirled and stared into the blinding light at this unexpected challenge. He instantly decided that he had to do with drunken men and called out angrily, "Look here, you damn fools, shootin' aroun' a man like that; don't you do that no more!"

"Then you come on back here," replied a voice, coldly sober. "We've got a little business with you to-night."

This phrase, "little business," in that hard sober tone could mean only one thing, that Abner had committed some wrong which was to be settled by force. The teamster thought swiftly over his recent doings for some insult or grievance he had offered any one, but found nothing at all. As far as he knew not one of his acts merited censure from