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Peter Petrie, a lowering-eyed, severe-visaged, square-jawed man, gave Tank Dysart only a glance of ire from under his hat-brim, as if the matter were not worth the waste of a word.

Dysart, wreck though he was, had not yet lost all conscience. He was in an agony of remorse and doubt. It kept him sober longer than he had been for five years, for he was a professed drunkard and idler, scarcely considered responsible. He could not be sure that he had experienced aught which he seemed to remember–he hoped it was all only his drunken fancy, for what could have been the fate of the child subject to the freaks of his imbecile folly! He was reassured to hear no rumors of a lost child, and yet so definite were the images of his recollection that they must needs constrain his credulity.

He felt it in the nature of a rescue one day when, as he chanced to join a group of gossips loitering around the fire of the forge, he heard the smith ask casually: “Who is that thar baby visitin’ at Peter Petrie ‘s over yander acrost Storm Mounting?”

“Gran’child, I reckon,” suggested his big-boned, bare-armed, soot-grimed striker.

“Peter Petrie hain’t got nare gran’-child,” said one of the loungers.

Tank, sober for once, held his breath to listen.

“Behaves powerful like a gran’dad,” observed the smith, holding a horseshoe with the tongs in the fire while the striker laid hold on the bellows and the sighing sound surged to and fro and the white blaze flared forth, showing the interested faces of the group in the dusky smithy, and among them the horse whose shoe was making, while another stood at the open door defined against the snow. “Behaves like he ain’t got a mite o’ sense. I war goin’ by thar one day las’ week an’ I stepped up on the porch ter pass the time o’ day with Pete an’ his wife, an’ the door war open. And’ what d’ye s’pose I seen! Old Peter Petrie a-goin’ round the floor on all fours, an’ a-settin’ on his back war a baby–powerful peart youngster–jes’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-whoopin’ an’ a-poundin’ old Peter with a whip! An’ Pete galloped, he did! Didn’t seem beset with them rheumatics he used ter talk about–peartest leetle ‘possum of a baby!”

Tank Dysart lost no time in his investigations and he had the courage of his convictions. He did not scruple to call Peter Petrie to his face a mail-robber.

“Ye tuk a package deposited in the United States’ mail and converted it to your own use,” he vociferated.

“‘Twar neither stamped nor addressed,” old Petrie gruffly contended, albeit obviously disconcerted.

Dysart even sought to induce the postmaster to send a complaint of the rider to the postal authorities.

“I got too much respec’ fur my job,” replied that worthy, jocosely eying Tank across the counter of the store. “I ain’t goin’ ter let on ter the folks in Washington that we send babies about in the mail-bags hyar in the mountings.”

The social acquaintance of the little man had necessarily been rather limited, but one day a neighbor, attracted to the Petrie cabin by idle curiosity concerning the waif robbed from the mails, gazed upon him for one astonished instant and then proclaimed his identity.

“Nare Gilhooley should ever cross Storm Mounting, ‘cordin ter yer saying Petey, an’ hyar ye hev been totin’ Boss Gilhooley ‘s gran’son back an’ forth across Old Stormy, an’ all yer spare time ye spend on yer hands an’ knees bar kin’ like a dog jes’ ter pleasure him.”

Peter Petrie changed countenance suddenly. His square, bristly, grim jaw hardened and stiffened, so dear to him were all his stubborn convictions and grizzly, ancient feuds. But he bestirred himself to cause information to be conveyed to Bruce Gilhooley of his son’s whereabouts for he readily suspected that the family had fled to Minervy Sue’s in Georgia. Peter Petrie sustained in this act of conscience a grievous wrench, for it foreshadowed parting with the choice missive filched from the mail-bag, but he was not unmindful of the anguish and bereavement of the mother, and somehow the thought was peculiarly coercive at this season.