s it had come, and once more her faculties worked
feverishly. Now she realized pain, horror, despair, hopelessness in a
sudden, overwhelming flood. She shrank back deeper into the chair as
though to avoid physical blows which were being rained upon her by
some unseen hand.

Presently she started up with a faint cry. She walked across the room
and back again. She paused at the bureau, muttering--

"It can't be! It can't be!" she said to herself, in an agony of
terror. "George is too good, too honest. Ah!"

Her love cried out for the man, but reason checked her while her heart
tried to rush her into extravagant hopefulness. Iredale had admitted
the smuggling. She had seen with her own eyes the doings at the
graveyard. And therein lay the key to everything. Leslie had said so
with his dying breath. But as this thought came to her it was chased
away by her love in a fresh burst of fervour. She could not believe
it. There must be some awful, some horrible mistake.

Slowly her mind steadied itself; the long years of calmness which she
had spent amidst the profound peace of the prairie helped her. She
gripped herself lest the dreadful thought of what she had heard should
drive her to madness. She went over what she had been told with a keen
examination. She listened to her own arguments for and against the man
she loved. She went back to the time when Leslie had told her of his
"coup." She remembered everything so well. She paused as she
recollected her dead lover's anger at George's coming to the party.
And, for a moment, her heart almost stood still. She asked herself,
had she misinterpreted his meaning? Had there been something
underlying his expressed displeasure at George's coming which related
to what he knew of his, George Iredale's, doings at the ranch? Every
word he had said came back to her. She remembered that he had finished
up his protest with a broken sentence.

"--And besides----"

There was a significance in those words now which she could not help
dwelling upon. Then she put the thought from her as her faith in her
lover re-asserted itself. But the effort was a feeble one; her love
was being overwhelmed by the damning evidence.

She moved restlessly from the bureau to the window. The curtained
aperture looked out upon the far-reaching cornfields, which were now
only a mass of brown stubble. In the distance, beyond the dyke, she
could see the white steam of the traction-engine and the figures of
many m