llowed. He was fully determined to find out her secret, and
even, if necessary, to accost her for that purpose. He was perfectly
aware what he was doing, and all its risks and penalties; he knew the
audacity of such an introduction, but he felt in his left-hand pocket
for the sprig of fern which was an excuse for it; he knew the danger of
following a possible confidante of desperadoes, but he felt in his
right-hand pocket for the derringer that was equal to it. They were
both there; he was ready.

He was nearing the convent and the oldest and most ruinous part of the
town. He did not disguise from himself the gloomy significance of
this; even in the old days the crumbling adobe buildings that abutted
on the old garden wall of the convent were the haunts of lawless
Mexicans and vagabond peons. As the roadway began to be rough and
uneven, and the gaunt outlines of the sagging roofs of tiles stood out
against the sky above the lurking shadows of ruined doorways, he was
prepared for the worst. As the crumbling but still massive walls of
the convent garden loomed ahead, the tall, graceful, black-gowned
figure he was following presently turned into the shadow of the wall
itself. He quickened his pace, lest it should again escape him.
Suddenly it stopped, and remained motionless. He stopped, too. At the
same moment it vanished!

He ran quickly forward to where it had stood, and found himself before
a large iron gate, with a smaller one in the centre, that had just
clanged to on its rusty hinges. He rubbed his eyes!--the place, the
gate, the wall, were all strangely familiar! Then he stepped back into
the roadway, and looked at it again. He was not mistaken.

He was standing before the porter's lodge of the Convent of the Sacred
Heart.

CHAPTER V.

The day following the great stagecoach robbery found the patient
proprietor of Collinson's Mill calm and untroubled in his usual
seclusion. The news that had thrilled the length and breadth of
Galloper's Ridge had not touched the leafy banks of the dried-up river;
the hue and cry had followed the stage-road, and no courier had deemed
it worth his while to diverge as far as the rocky ridge which formed
the only pathway to the mill. That day Collinson's solitude had been
unbroken even by the haggard emigrant from the valley, with his old
monotonous story of hardship and privation. The birds had flown nearer
to the old mill, as if emboldened by the unwonted quiet