"You know she's one of the women that never love any man but one.

I don't want another man's wife, if she'd have me." Suddenly he faced Barney again.

"For God's sake, Barney," he cried out, "be a man and go back to her, and marry her!" Barney shook his head; with a kind of a sob he turned around and went his way without another word.

Thomas Payne said no more; he stared after Barney's retreating figure, and again the look of bewilderment and horror was in his face.
That afternoon he asked his father, with a casual air, if he had heard anything about Barney Thayer getting his back injured in any way.
"Why, no, I can't say as I have," returned the squire.
"I saw him this morning, and I thought his back looked as if it was growing like Royal Bennet's.

I dare say I imagined it," said Thomas.
Then he went out of the room whistling.
But, during his few weeks' stay in Pembroke, he put the same question to one and another, with varying results.