tatement,
but nobody heard it, because they were busy organizing a search party. A
few moments later Billie and Ben went down to the village in the motor
car for guides, and this time guides were forthcoming.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MILLS OF GOD.

It was not often that Billie lost a night's rest from anxiety, but that
night her eyes refused to close and she lay staring into the darkness,
straining her ears for sounds in the forest. Even Richard's sister,
Maggie, was not so abjectly miserable as Billie. She tried to explain to
herself that it was all because she had been the one to shoot the young
man in the arm.

"I'd much rather have shot that horrid Lupo," she sobbed under her
breath. "Suppose I've killed Richard? The wound may be much worse than
we thought it was." She wiped her eyes on the sheet and lay very still
listening. Away off on the mountain somewhere a dog began to howl. The
weird sound made her shiver and hide her face in the pillow.

"Oh, God protect him," she whispered, and then blushed furiously. "I
suppose I have a perfect right to pray for a friend?" she thought in
reply to some unspoken thought.

Besides the anxiety she felt, all sorts of new and unusual sensations
were disturbing her peace of mind that wakeful night. She experienced a
kind of irritation against Phoebe, which she could not explain to
herself.

"He'll think she's lots braver than I am," she thought, naming no names,
"because I wouldn't dare go out in the woods alone at night to hunt for
him. She is braver and better than I am. She is wonderful and--and so
beautiful. I--I wish my hair wasn't so straight," she added to the
pillow into which she had poured these girlish secrets.

At last when the first gray streaks of dawn appeared, Billie rose and,
quietly dressing, crept downstairs.

"How silly I have been," she was admonishing herself, irritably, when
she saw Phoebe run around the side of the house and stand looking up at
the sleeping porch.

Billie dashed across the clearing.

"Phoebe, have you found him? Is he all right?" she demanded, grasping
the girl's shoulders and shaking her in her impatience.

"Yes. I found him and took him to my home," answered Phoebe proudly. "He
was lost in the marsh just as you were. His arm was bleeding and he was
very weak."

"He is very ill?"

"No, no. It was from losing so much blood, they said."

"They?"

"Old Granny and Dr. Hume. My father is there, too." Phoebe clasped her