e money."

She lifted her eyebrows in well simulated surprise.

"But the envelope?"

Now he spoke swiftly and she knew that he had made up his mind that she
was hiding nothing, that she knew nothing, for there was a note of
relief in his words.

"I had his cabin searched last night, while we all were at the dance. It
was found there. There was no sign of the money!"

Again she tossed away the envelope as though it no longer had any
interest for her.

"A man," she said contemptuously, "who would not destroy a piece of
evidence like that, is a fool!"

The matter was dropped there; one would have said it was forgotten by
both of them. For the rest of the day Winifred Waverly appeared to be
much interested in her book, Pollard seemed busy in his office or upon
the street. But the girl realized that the man was taking no chances and
that there was going to be little chance of her riding the twenty miles
to the Poison Hole without his knowing of it. She let the day go with no
thought of making the trip, satisfying herself with the knowledge which
she had gleaned from the conversation she had overheard at the
schoolhouse, and with the comforting thought that she had ten days yet.

Upon the second day following the dance she saw Broderick and Pollard
talking earnestly out under the pear trees. Broderick, at his boots
whipping impatiently with his riding whip, did not come to the house as
was his custom, but going back to the gate flung himself upon his horse
and rode away. That same afternoon he came again, and this time Cole
Dalton, the sheriff, was with him. They were met by Pollard at the front
door, and for an hour the girl in her room could hear their low voices
in the room below her.

The third day came and went and she saw no one but Pollard and Mrs.
Riddell. Pollard was unusually silent, and again and again she saw that
his eyes were hard, his mouth cruel. She began to forget that he was
kin to her; she began to see only that here was a man playing his game
with high, very high, stakes, that he was watchful and determined, that
he was not the sort to let anything, no matter what, stand between him
and the thing he had made up his mind to do. She saw that he was growing
nervous and sensed that he was in that frame of mind when men act
swiftly and unscrupulously. She took no step about the house that
Pollard did not know of it.

The fourth day came, and her own nerves were strained to snapping. If
she could o