she. "We've been trying to see
the troop through the glass. They must have started before daybreak, for
there's nothing on the road to Frayne."

"It disappears over the divide three miles out," he answered vaguely,
and conscious that her clear eyes were studying his face. "I didn't
sleep well either. We shall be having news from Hal to-day, and the mail
rider comes down from Frayne."

She had thrown about her a long, loose wrapper, and her lustrous hair
tumbled like a brown-black torrent down over her shoulders and back.
Steadfastly the brown eyes followed his every move.

"It is hours to breakfast time, Daddy dear; let me make you some coffee
before you go out."

"What? Who said I was going out?" he asked, forcing a smile; then, more
gravely: "I'll be back in thirty minutes, dear, but wait a moment I
cannot. I want to catch a man before he can possibly ride away."

He bent and kissed her hurriedly, and went briskly down the stairs. In
the lower hall he suddenly struck a parlor match that flared up and
illumined the winding staircase to the third story. Some thought as
sudden prompted her to glance aloft just in time to catch a glimpse of a
woman's face withdrawing swiftly over the balcony rail. In her hatred of
anything that savored of spying the girl could have called aloud a
demand to know what Mrs. Fletcher wanted, but strange things were in the
wind, as she was learning, and something whispered silence. Slowly she
returned to Jessie's side, and together once more they searched with the
glasses the distant trail that, distinctly visible now in the slant of
the morning sun, twisted up the northward slopes on the winding way to
Frayne. Not a whiff of dust could they see.

Meantime John Folsom strode swiftly down the well-known path to the
quartermaster's depot, a tumult of suspicion and conjecture whirling in
his brain. As he walked he recalled the many hints and stories that had
come to his ears of Burleigh's antecedents elsewhere and his
associations here. With all his reputation for enterprise and wealth,
there were "shady" tales of gambling transactions and salted mines and
watered stocks that attached perhaps more directly to the men with whom
he foregathered than to him. "A man is known by the company he keeps,"
said Folsom, and Burleigh's cronies, until Folsom came to settle in Gate
City, had been almost exclusively among the "sharps," gamblers, and
their kindred, the projectors and prospectors ever preyi