heerfully as to be
almost jeering.

His cheerfulness was not in vain, for a smile stole to her lips, though
it only flickered for an instant and was gone. For all that, he knew he
had saved the situation, and that another chapter of the life-history of
Orlando and Louise had been ended. A fresh chapter would begin tomorrow;
but sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.

CHAPTER XII. MAN UNNATURAL

Mazarine discovered the flight of Louise soon after she had gone. He had
not been five hundred yards from the house since she returned with
Orlando after the night spent upon the prairie, save when he had been
obliged to go in to Askatoon and had taken her with him, dumb and
passive. She had been a prisoner, tied to the stirrups of her captor;
and he had berated her, had preached at her. As Louise had said, once on
the way to Askatoon, he had even tried to make her kneel down in the
dust of the trail and plead with Heaven to convict her of sin.

On the evening of Louise's flight, however, he had been forced to go to
a neighbouring ranch, and had commanded Li Choo to keep a strict watch
at the windows of her room to see that she did not attempt escape. She
could not escape by the door of the room because he had the key in his
pocket. Li Choo was not a stern jailer, however. Mazarine had not been
gone three minutes before the Chinaman had touch with Louise. He did
more; he threw up into the open window of her room a screw-driver, with
which she took the old-fashioned door off its hinges, after half an
hour's work. Then, leaving a note on the table of the dining-room, to
say that she could not bear it any longer, that she would never come
back, and that she meant to be free, she summoned Patsy Kernaghan and
fled to the Young Doctor.

When Mazarine returned and found her note, he plunged up the stairs to
her bedroom, his pious wrath gurgling in his throat, only to find the
door locked; for Li Choo had promptly restored it to its hinges after
Louise had gone, afterwards dropping from the high window like a cat,
without hurt.

Li Choo, blinking, opaque, immobile, save for his piercing and
mysterious eyes, had no explanation to give. All he said was, "Me no see
all sides house same time"; so suggesting that, as the room had windows
on all three sides, Louise must have escaped while he made his supposed
sentry-go, slip-slopping round the house. Mazarine showed what he
thought by spitting in Li Choo's face, and then ru