and would suspect her designs. There was nothing to do but wait.
It was after one o'clock when, slipping out from the alcove, she
ostentatiously closed the office-door and, locking it, walked through
the passage that led to the dining-room. Her footsteps sounded loudly as
she went upstairs to her room. She intended they should. In her room,
she took down a dark, heavy cloak, and, throwing it over her shoulders,
drew the hood over her head. A moment she stood, then turned and
silently retraced her steps.

As the outside door closed noiselessly behind her, there was a momentary
tightening around her heart. After all, she was leaving the only friends
she had ever known. They were crude, coarse, uncouth, but she knew them.
She knew that they would not remain ignorant of her actions this night.
It would cut her off from them forever, and what was her gain?

Only those she had known for a day, those whose very words of kindness
had shown her how wide was the gulf that parted her from them. How wide
it was she had never realised till now when she was to attempt to cross
it, with the return for ever barred. She recalled the easy grace of Miss
Hartwell, considerate with a manner that plainly pointed to their
separate walks in life. And Firmstone? He had been more than kind, but
the friendly light in his eyes, the mobile sympathy of his lips, these
did not come to her now. What if the steel should gleam in his eyes, the
tense muscles draw the lips in stern rebuke, the look that those eyes
and lips could take, when they looked on her, not as Elise of the Blue
Goose, but Elise, a fugitive, a dependant?

The colour deepened, the figure grew rigid. She was neither a fugitive
nor a dependant. She was doing right; how it would be accepted was no
concern of hers.

The shadow of the great mountain fell across the gulch and lay sharp and
clear on the flank of the slide beyond. Overhead, in the deep blue, the
stars glinted and shone, steely hard. Elise shivered in a hitherto
unknown terror as she crept into the still deeper shadow of the stunted
spruces that fringed the talus from the mountain. She did not look
behind. Had she done so she might have seen another shadow stealing
cautiously, but swiftly, after her, only pausing when she passed from
sight within the entrance to the office at the mill.

Zephyr had despoiled the Blue Goose of its lesser prey. He had no
intention of stopping at that.

Elise had gained her first objective p