he sash, stuck her head out
and listened. She drew back, her face slowly whitening.

"Some one is coming, Aunty--and riding very fast!"

A premonition of tragedy, associated with the fire, had seized the girl at
her first glimpse of the light, though she had said nothing. The
appearance of a rider, approaching the house at breakneck speed had added
strength to her fears, and now, driven by the urge of apprehension that
had seized her she flitted out of the room before Agatha could restrain
her, and was down in the sitting-room in an instant, applying a match to
the lamp. As the light flared up she heard the thunder of hoofs just
outside the door, and she ran to it, throwing it open. She shrank back,
drawing her breath gaspingly, for the rider had dismounted and stepped
toward her, into the dim light of the open doorway.

"You!" she said.

A low laugh was her answer, and Trevison stepped over the threshold and
closed the door behind him. From the foot of the stairs Agatha saw him,
and she stood, nerveless and shaking with dread over the picture he made.

He had been more than forty-eight hours without sleep, the storm-center of
action had left its impression on him, and his face was gaunt and haggard,
with great, dark hollows under his eyes. The three or four days' growth of
beard accentuated the bold lines of his chin and jaw; his eyes were
dancing with the fires of passion; he held a Winchester rifle under his
right arm, the left, hanging limply at his side, was stained darkly. He
swayed as he stood looking at the girl, and smiled with faint derision at
the naked fear and wonder that had leaped into her eyes. But the derision
was tinged with bitterness, for this girl with both hands pressed over her
breast, heaving with the mingled emotions of modesty and dismay, was one
of the chief factors in the scheme to rob him. The knowledge hurt him
worse than the bullet which had passed through his arm. She had been
uppermost in his thoughts during his reckless ride from Manti, and he
would have cheerfully given his land, his ten years of labor, for the
assurance that she was innocent. But he knew guilt when he saw it, and
proof of it had been in her avoidance of him, in her ride to save
Corrigan's mining machinery, in her subsequent telling of his presence at
the butte on the night of the dynamiting, in her bitter declaration that
he ought to be punished for it. The case against her was strong. And yet
on his ride from Man