“Davy,” he cried, “come out here and hug me.  Why, you look as if I were your grandmother’s ghost.”

“And if you were,” I answered, “you could not have surprised me more.  Where have you been?”

“At Jonesboro, acting the gallant with the widow, winning and losing skins and cow-bells and land at rattle-and-snap, horse-racing with that wild Mr. Jackson.  Faith, he near shot the top of my head off because I beat him at Greasy Cove.”

I laughed, despite my anxiety.

“And Sevier?” I demanded.

“You have not heard how Sevier got off?” exclaimed Nick.  “Egad, that was a crowning stroke of genius!  Cozby and Evans, Captains Greene and Gibson, and Sevier’s two boys whom you met on the Nollichucky rode over the mountains to Morganton.  Greene and Gibson and Sevier’s boys hid themselves with the horses in a clump outside the town, while Cozby and Evans, disguised as bumpkins in hunting shirts, jogged into the town with Sevier’s racing mare between them.  They jogged into the town, I say, through the crowds of white trash, and rode up to the court-house where Sevier was being tried for his life.  Evans stood at the open door and held the mare and gaped, while Cozby stalked in and shouldered his way to the front within four feet of the bar, like a big, awkward countryman.  Jack Sevier saw him, and he saw Evans with the mare outside.  Then, by thunder, Cozby takes a step right up to the bar and cries out, ’Judge, aren’t you about done with that man?’ Faith, it was like judgment day, such a mix-up as there was after that, and Nollichucky Jack made three leaps and got on the mare, and in the confusion Cozby and Evans were off too, and the whole State of North Carolina couldn’t catch ’em then.”  Nick sighed.  “I’d have given my soul to have been there,” he said.

“Come in,” said I, for lack of something better.

“Cursed if you haven’t given me a sweet reception, Davy,” said he.  “Have you lost your practice, or is there a lady here, you rogue,” and he poked into the cupboard with his stick.  “Hullo, where are you going now?” he added, his eye falling on the saddle-bags.

I had it on my lips to say, and then I remembered Mr. Wharton’s injunction.

“I’m going on a journey,” said I.

“When?” said Nick.

“I leave in about an hour,” said I.

He sat down.  “Then I leave too,” he said.

“What do you mean, Nick?” I demanded.

“I mean that I will go with you,” said he.

“But I shall be gone three months or more,” I protested.

“I have nothing to do,” said Nick, placidly.

A vague trouble had been working in my mind, but now the full horror of it dawned upon me.  I was going to St. Louis.  Mrs. Temple and Harry Riddle were gone there, so Polly Ann had avowed, and Nick could not help meeting Riddle.  Sorely beset, I bent over to roll up a shirt, and refrained from answering.

He came and laid a hand on my shoulder.