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“This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison. Here is this fellow, Boyston McGurny, been about here two years, and a reward for five hundred dollars out for his arrest.”

“That’s Boy’s fault, Sher’ff, not our’n,” leered the glib old man. He, too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. “Boy’s in no wise sociable.”

“It’s plumb flying in the face of the law,” declared the officer. “If I had a guide, I’d not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me here,–what’s his name!–yes, Smith, Barton Smith,–who will guide us to where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive.” he added with an inflection of doubt.

Certainly this was a dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful sequelae. Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note, silently sulked under the officer’s intimation that, being able-bodied men, he would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of his county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse to aid the law. Bygrave, however, realized a “story” in the air, and Seymour was interested in the impending developments; for being a close observer, he had perceived that the girl was in the clutch of some tumultuous though covert agitation. Her blood blazed at fever-heat in her cheeks; her eyes were on fire; every muscle was tense; and her brain whirled. To her the crisis was tremendous. This was the result of her unwarranted interference. Who was she, indeed, that she should seek to command the march of events and deploy sequences? Her foolish maneuvering had lured this innocent man to ruin, capture, anguish, and death. No warning could he have; the window was opaque with the corrugations of the rainfall on the streaming panes, and set too high to afford him a glimpse from without. And, oh, how he would despise the traitor that she must needs seem to be! She had not a moment for reflection, for counsel, for action. Already the signal,–he was prompt at the tryst,–the sharp, crystalline vibration of the tap on the glass!

The sheriff rose instantly with that cumbrous agility sometimes characterizing portly men. “There he is now!” he exclaimed.

But Meddy, with a little hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening door. “Barton Smith!” she exclaimed, with shrill significance. “Hyar is yer guide, Sher’ff, wet ez a drownded rat.”

The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement. For a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling with his suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to discriminate the powers of the dramatis personae.

“Now, my man, step lively,” said the officer in his big, husky voice. “Do you know this Royston McGurny?”

To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition and the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others as to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard wretch at the door, mustering his courage, replied: “Know Royston McGurny! None better. Knowed him all my life.”

“Got pretty good horse?”

“Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison’s.”

“I’ll go show ye whar the saddle be,” exclaimed Meddy, with her wonted officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered scheme. Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom without, whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate chance of escape before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton Smith should balk the possibility. But, no,–and he doubted anew all his suspicions,–in a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new hope in that pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among the equine group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown skirt of her gown, showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a coarse, red plaid shawl adjusted over her head and shoulders.