st not let her uncle
guess that the night had grown bitter in her mouth as it had in Buck
Thornton's.

The benches were cleared and pushed back against the walls, the
musicians were at it again, when Pollard came to her.

"Don't you think, Winifred, we'd better be going?" he asked quietly. "It
is late, we've got a good ride ahead of us and I have a lot to do
tomorrow."

But she pleaded for one more dance, and then one more, and finally with
much seeming regretfulness allowed her uncle to slip on her cloak for
her.

"I may be a hypocrite," she told herself a little sternly, as she sat in
the buckboard at her uncle's side. "But they are playing me for a little
fool! And ... and if they knew that I guessed...."

She shivered and Pollard asked if she were cold.

It was a swift drive with few words spoken. Winifred, her chin sunk in
her wraps, seemed to be dozing much of the way, and Henry Pollard had
enough to think about to make the silence grateful. The cream-coloured
mares raced out across the level land of the valley, with little thought
of the light wagon and much thought of the home stable and hay. And,
racing on, they sped at last through the long alley-like street of
Hill's Corners, into the glaring light from the saloons, by many shadows
at the corners of houses, their ears smitten by much noise of loud
voices and the clack of booted feet upon the board sidewalks. When
Pollard jerked in his team at his own front gate, the girl slipped
quickly from the buckboard, saying quietly:

"I think I'll go right up to bed, Uncle Henry. I'm a little tired. Thank
you for taking me."

And when he said, "Good night, Winifred," she called back her good night
to him, and hurried under the old pear trees to the house. In the hall
she found her lamp burning where Mrs. Riddell had left it for her, and
taking it up she climbed the stairs to her room.

At last she was alone and could think! Her door was locked, her light
was out that no one might know she was awake, and she was crouching at
the open window, staring out at the night.

Out of a tangle of many doubts, suspicions and live terrors there were
at first two things which caught the high lights of her understanding,
standing clear of the shadows which obscured the others. Buck Thornton
was absolutely innocent of the thing she had imputed to him, and
unsuspecting of the evidence which was being piled up against him. And
her own uncle was the friend and the actual acco