uttered low and deep, and this time there was no mistake about
the nature of his speech. Shefford did not have the courage to turn to
see what had caused these exclamations. He knew since today had dawned
that there was calamity in the air.

"Shefford, I reckon if I know women there's a little hell coming to
you," said the Mormon, significantly.

Shefford wheeled as if a powerful force had turned him on a pivot. He
saw Fay Larkin. She seemed to be almost running. She was unhooded and
her bright hair streamed down. Her swift, lithe action was without
its usual grace. She looked wild, and she almost fell crossing the
stepping-stones of the brook.

Joe hurried to meet her, took hold of her arm and spoke, but she did not
seem to hear him. She drew him along with her, up the little bench under
the cedars straight toward Shefford. Her face held a white, mute agony,
as if in the hour of strife it had hardened into marble. But her eyes
were dark-purple fire--windows of an extraordinarily intense and vital
life. In one night the girl had become a woman. But the blight Shefford
had dreaded to see--the withering of the exquisite soul and spirit and
purity he had considered inevitable, just as inevitable as the death of
something similar in the flower she resembled, when it was broken and
defiled--nothing of this was manifest in her. Straight and swiftly she
came to him back in the shade of the cedars and took hold of his hands.

"Last night--HE CAME!" she said.

"Yes--Fay--I--I know," replied Shefford, haltingly.

He was tremblingly conscious of amaze at her--of something wonderful in
her. She did not heed Joe, who stepped aside a little; she did not see
Nas Ta Bega, who sat motionless on a log, apparently oblivious to her
presence.

"You knew he came?"

"Yes, Fay. I was awake when--they rode in. I watched them. I sat up all
night. I saw them ride away."

"If you knew when he came why didn't you run to me--to get to me before
he did?"

Her question was unanswerable. It had the force of a blow. It stunned
him. Its sharp, frank directness sprang from a simplicity and a strength
that had not been nurtured in the life he had lived. So far men had
wandered from truth and nature!

"I came to you as soon as I was able," she went on. "I must have
fainted. I just had to drag myself around.... And now I can tell you."

He was powerless to reply, as if she had put another unanswerable
question. What did she mean to tell him? W