act, having once
said it, it sounded plausible to her, and she waited till far into the
night for the sound of his horse's footsteps.

The suspicion which at midnight was yet a suspicion was by morning a
certainty, but Elizabeth kept her own counsel, and when Nathan brought
Jack at noon she did not speak of her husband's absence. The second day
the hired men began to make mention of it, and the evening of the third
day Luther Hansen appeared at the sitting-room door.

"Lizzie, what's this I hear about Hunter?" he asked, looking searchingly
into her face.

Elizabeth told him all that she knew, except the unjust thing he had said
about Luther.

"I don't know anything about his plans," she concluded, "except that he
said he meant to go to his mother after he had marketed the cattle. You'll
hear from the neighbours that Hugh's money has set me up and made a fool
of me, and various other things," she added; and she saw in his face that
it had already been said.

The girl sat and looked into the night through the open door for a moment
and then went on:

"I shall go to Colebyville to-morrow, and see Doctor Morgan and look after
business matters. I'll tell you what we decide upon when I get home.
There'll have to be a real division of the property now. I don't know what
to do about living here alone. I suppose there'll be every kind of
gossip?"

The last part of the sentence was a question, and one Luther was not the
man to evade.

"You'll have a lot of talk that hain't got no truth in it to meet," he
said reluctantly. "You'll have t' have some one with you here. You
couldn't git Hornby, could you?" Luther knew the nature of the gossip the
neighbours would wreak upon her.

A light fell upon Elizabeth.

"The very idea!" she exclaimed. "Just what I need to do and at the same
time just what I would love to do."

Luther was delighted that that important feature of the matter could be so
easily arranged. He could not bear to have her mixed up with any sort of
scandal, when her neighbours so little understood the real situation, and
would be so ready to strike her wherever they could.

"Then you go an' see Hornby to-night, Lizzie. Have Jake hitch up for you,
an' take Hepsie along." Luther paused a moment and then proceeded on
another phase of her troubles.

"Lizzie, how do you feel about it? Do you--would you like t' have 'im
back? 'Cause if you would, I'll go to Mitchell County for you. You ain't
goin' t' have no