ie," she whispered hurriedly. "Don't worry about me. I'll
be back--. Well, don't worry. Good-bye." She snatched a coat and hat,
and, going out, closed the door quietly behind her.

She stepped out into the dancing sunlight of an early spring morning.
The leafless vine on Mavity Bence's porch rattled dry stems against the
lattice work in a gay March wind. Taking counsel with herself for a
moment, she started swiftly down the street in the direction of the
mills. In the office they told her that Mr. Hardwick had gone to
Nashville to see about getting bloodhounds; MacPherson was following his
own plan of search in Watauga. She was permitted to go down into the
mechanical department and ask the head of it about Shade Buckheath.

"No, he ain't here," Mr. Ramsey told her promptly. "We're running so
short-handed that I don't know how to get along; and if I try to get an
extra man, I find he's out with the searchers. I sent up for Himes
yesterday, but him and Buckheath was to go together to-day, taking Mr.
Stoddard's car, so as to get further up into the Unakas."

Johnnie felt as though the blood receded from her face and gathered all
about a heart which beat to suffocation. For a wild moment she had an
impulse to denounce Buckheath and her stepfather. But almost instantly
she realized that she would weaken her cause and lose all chance of
assistance by doing so. Her standing in the mill was excellent, and as
she ran up the stairs she was going over in her mind the persons to whom
she might take her story. She found no one from whom she dared expect
credence and help. Out in the street again she caught sight of Charlie
Conroy, and her thoughts were turned by a natural association of ideas
to Lydia Sessions. That was it! Why had it not occurred to her before?
She hurried up the long hill to the Hardwick home and, trying first the
bell at the front, where she got no reply, skirted the house and rapped
long and loudly at the side door.

Harriet Hardwick, when things began to wear a tragic complexion, had
promptly packed her wardrobe and her children and flitted to Watauga.
This hegira was undertaken mainly to get her sister away from the scene
of Gray Stoddard's disappearance; yet when the move came to be made,
Miss Sessions refused to accompany her sister.

"I can't go," she repeated fiercely. "I'll stay here and keep house for
Jerome. Then if there comes any news, I'll be where--oh, don't look at
me that way. I wish you'd go