"PETER BLUNT."

Elia gone. The thought filled her with dismay. Elia was the one person
in the world she still clung to. And now he had gone--been spirited
away.

She thought of the poor stricken lad with his crooked body. She loved
him as she might have loved a child of her own. Yes, he was much more
to her than her brother. Had not she cared and struggled for him all
these years? He had become part of her very life.

And Peter, in whose care she had left him, had failed her. Who on
earth could she trust, if not Peter? She blamed him, blamed him
bitterly; but, in her heart, she knew she had no right to. Peter would
not willingly hurt her, and she knew well enough that if Elia had gone
it was through no carelessness of this gentle, kindly man.

She put the note away, and sat staring into the fire. The change of
thought had eased the pitch of her nerves for a moment. If she could
only blot that other out altogether--but even as the wish was
formulated in her brain, the horror and dread were on her again
crushing her.

She sprang to her feet and paced the room with rapid, uneven strides.
She could not rest. The dread of the return of the vigilantes obsessed
her. She found herself vaguely wondering if they were all out. Was Doc
Crombie out? No, she knew he wasn't. That was something. That was the
man she most dreaded. To her heated imagination he seemed inevitable.
He could not fail in his self-imposed mission. He would hunt his man
down. He would never pause until the wretched victim was swinging at
the rope end.

She shuddered. This sort of thing had never before impressed its
horror upon her as it did now. How should it? It had always seemed so
far away, so remote from her life. And now--oh, God, to think that its
shadow was so near her!

Then for a second her struggling brain eased with an undefined hope.
She was thinking of how they had tried to track Will before, and how
they had failed. She tried to tell herself that then their incentive
had been even greater. Had it not been the greed of gold? And she well
knew its power with these men. Yes, it suggested hope. But that one
passing gleam vanished all too swiftly. She felt in her inmost heart
that no such luck would serve him now. These men were bloodhounds on a
trail of blood. They were demanding a life, nor would they lift their
noses from the scent until their work was accomplished.

It was not the man. It was not the thought