ve no chance whatever to reply. She promptly sat down at
the table, and, gazing straight into the stricken woman's face, told
her all that her husband had told her, and all that she had gleaned
for herself, elsewhere. She linked everything together in such a
manner as to carry absolute conviction, showing the jeopardy in which
Jim stood.

Never once did she refer to Will, or hint again that she had
discovered Eve's secret, the secret which Doc Crombie and the whole of
Barnriff would have given worlds to possess, but she told her story
from the point of view of Jim's peril as a suspected cattle-thief, and
his apparent interest in her, Eve, which the whole of the village
women were beginning so virtuously to resent.

"An' if all that wasn't sufficient to set a wretched lot o' scallywags
hanging him, along comes this business of the Little Bluff River," she
finished up.

Eve's face was a study in emotion during the girl's recital. From
terror it passed to indignation, from horror to the shrinking of
outraged wifehood. Now she stammered her request for Annie to go on.

"I--I don't understand," she declared, "what has that----?"

"What's it got to do with it?" cried Annie, with hot anger at the
thought. "Why, just this. It's that mean Smallbones for sure. It's him
at the bottom of it. They're saying that Jim did see the rustler, an'
helped him get clear away while he pretended to be chasin' him. That's
what the mildest of 'em sez. But ther's others swear, an' Smallbones
is one of 'em, that Jim himself was the rustler, an' they rec'nized
him from the start. But someways he jest managed to fool Doc, 'cause
his horse was cool, and didn't show no signs of the chase."

The girl's pretty eyes were wide with anger at these accusers. But her
anger was nothing to compare with the fury which now stirred Eve.

"Oh, they're wicked, cruel monsters! They hate him, and they only want
to hang him because they hate him. It's--it's nothing to do with the
cattle stealing. Smallbones has always hated Jim, because--because
Jim's better educated and comes from good people. Jim a cattle-thief?
Jim wouldn't steal a--a--blade of grass. He's too noble, and good,
and--and honest. Oh, I hate these people! I hate them all--all!"

Annie sat aghast at the storm she had roused. But her woman's wit at
once told her the nature of the real feeling underlying the girl's
words. She had suspected before, but now she understood what, perhaps,
Eve herself