m room to room, downstairs and up. There were signs of her--a towel
on a chair, a broom leaning against a door upstairs, the neatly made
beds, the orderly kitchen, giving evidence of the morning cleaning, but
no supper cooking on the stove, the fire of which had burned to cinders.
She had not been here for a long while--since early morning possibly.
But where had she gone--where? Hawk Kennedy would hardly have dared to
come here--to the village--hardly have succeeded in enticing her away
from this house, surrounded by neighbors--still less have succeeded in
carrying her off without their knowledge. He rushed out into the road
and questioned. No one seemed to have seen her. The eagerness and
suppressed anxiety of Peter's manner quickly drew a crowd which felt the
contagion of his excitement. A man joined the group. Yes. He had seen
Beth in the morning early. She was hurrying down the path which led into
the pines. He had not seen her since.

Peter glanced at him just once more to be sure that he was speaking the
truth and then, without a thought as to the impression he had created in
the minds of the villagers, set off running through the path toward his
cabin.

Fool that he had been! To leave Beth unguarded--unwarned even--with Hawk
within a quarter of a mile of her. Why had he not seen the hand of fate
in Beth's presence here at Black Rock near McGuire, the man who had
wronged her father--the hand of fate, which with unerring definiteness
was guiding the principals in this sordid tragedy together from the ends
of the earth for a reckoning? And what was this reckoning to be? McGuire
had already fallen a victim to the man's devilish skill and audacity.
And Beth----? What match was she for a clever desperate rogue who balked
at nothing? How had he learned of Beth's existence and how, knowing of
it, had he managed to beguile her away from the village? Peter was
beginning to believe with McGuire that Hawk Kennedy was indeed in league
with the devil.

Peter was not now aware of any pain or even of bodily fatigue, for there
was no room in his mind for any thought of self. Scarcely conscious of
his new exertions, he ran across the log-jam below the pool and up the
path to the Cabin. What he expected to find there he did not know, but
it seemed clear that Beth had come this way in the morning and if not to
the Cabin, where else? Hawk had been here when she had come into the
woodland path. That was enough. As he reached the tu