e gray dawn came soon enough, and the coach drew up at "Red Chief"
while the lights in the bar-room and dining-room of the hotel were
still struggling with the far flushing east. Cass alighted, placed Miss
Mortimer in the hands of the landlady, and returned to the vehicle. It
was still musty, close, and frowzy, with half-awakened passengers.
There was a vacated seat on the top, which Cass climbed up to, and
abstractedly threw himself beside a figure muffled in shawls and rugs.
There was a slight movement among the multitudinous enwrappings, and
then the figure turned to him and said, dryly, "Good morning!" It was
Miss Porter!

"Have you been long here?" he stammered.

"All night."

He would have given worlds to leave her at that moment. He would have
jumped from the starting coach to save himself any explanation of the
embarrassment he was furiously conscious of showing, without, as he
believed, any adequate cause. And yet, like all inexperienced, sensitive
men, he dashed blindly into that explanation; worse, he even told his
secret at once, then and there, and then sat abashed and conscience
stricken, with an added sense of its utter futility.

"And this," summed up the young girl, with a slight shrug of her pretty
shoulders, "is YOUR MAY?"

Cass would have recommenced his story.

"No, don't, pray! It isn't interesting, nor original. Do YOU believe
it?"

"I do," said Cass, indignantly.

"How lucky! Then let me go to sleep."

Cass, still furious, but uneasy, did not again address her. When the
coach stopped at Blazing Star she asked him, indifferently: "When does
this sentimental pilgrimage begin?"

"I return for her at one o'clock," replied Cass, stiffly.

He kept his word. He appeased his eager companions with a promise of
future fortune, and exhibited the present and tangible reward. By a
circuitous route known only to himself, he led Miss Mortimer to the road
before the cabin. There was a pink flush of excitement on her somewhat
faded cheek.

"And it was here?" she asked, eagerly.

"I found it here."

"And the body?"

"That was afterward. Over in that direction, beyond the clump of
buckeyes, on the Red Chief turnpike."

"And any one coming from the road we left just now and going
to--to--that place, would have to cross just here? Tell me," she said,
with a strange laugh, laying her cold nervous hand on his, "wouldn't
they?"

"They would."

"Let us go to that place."

Cass stepped out bris