CHAPTER XXI.
THE COMEDY OF A SHEEPFOLD A glance, a word--and joy or pain Befalls; what was no more shall be.
How slight the links are in the chain That binds us to our destiny! -- T.B.

Aldrich.
Oscar's eye, roaming the landscape as he left Shirley Claiborne and started for the bungalow, swept the upland Claiborne acres and rested upon a moving shadow.

He drew rein under a clump of wild cherry-trees at the roadside and waited.

Several hundred yards away lay the Claiborne sheepfold, with a broad pasture rising beyond.

A shadow is not a thing to be ignored by a man trained in the niceties of scouting.