door elate and triumphant.
"You're in nigger luck, Mad! I found that stole hoss of Judge
Boompointer's had got away and strayed among your stock in the corral.
Take him and you're safe; he can't be outrun this side of the state
line."

"I ain't no hoss-thief," said Madison grimly.

"Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss--a fool--ef you didn't take him.
I'm testimony that you found him among your hosses; I'll tell Judge
Boompointer you've got him, and ye kin send him back when you're safe.
The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and call it quits. So ef
you've writ to Salomy Jane, come."

Madison Clay no longer hesitated. Salomy Jane might return at any
moment,--it would be part of her "fool womanishness,"--and he was in
no mood to see her before a third party. He laid the note on the table,
gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly believed he was
leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped on the stolen horse,
and swept away with his kinsman.

But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view of
the open door. The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones, birds,
and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at night by shy,
stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by any of the Clay
family. It was known in the district that Clay had flown across the
state line, his daughter was believed to have joined him the next day,
and the house was supposed to be locked up. It lay off the main road,
and few passed that way. The starving cattle in the corral at last broke
bounds and spread over the woods. And one night a stronger blast than
usual swept through the house, carried the note from the table to the
floor, where, whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly rotted.

But though the sting of her father's reproach was spared her, Salomy
Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened. For as she
entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she saw the figure of
Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards her. The unaffected cry
of joy that rose from her lips died there as she caught sight of his
face in the open light.

"You are hurt," she said, clutching his arm passionately.

"No," he said. "But I wouldn't mind that if"--

"You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I heard the
shootin', but I DID come," she went on feverishly. "I ran back here when
I heard the two shots, but you were gone. I went to the corral, but y