man in the doorway was quite dead, and then, with Harris's
assistance, quickly found the horses and harnessed them to the buggy.
He also found another horse near the roadway, saddled and bridled.
"We will make the prisoner ride his own horse," he said, "while you
take your son in the buggy."

They placed the wounded and still unconscious Allan in the buggy as
gently as they could, and then Grey gave his attention to the
prisoner. Having searched his clothing for weapons, he cut away the
bonds that securely held his arms and feet, and released the sack
from his half-choked throat. The man writhed and gasped for fresh
air, and the policeman drew the sack away and revealed the face of
Jim Travers.

CHAPTER XVIII

CONVERGING TRAILS

Beulah Harris raised her arms above her head and drank in the fresh
mountain air that flooded through the open window. A smoky red, with
brighter shafts of yellow behind, streamed up from the eastern sky
and sent a glow of burnt-orange colour through her bedroom. The girl
stretched her spread fingers to the limit of their reach, and with
extended toes sought the iron bars at the foot of the bed, filling
her lungs with the fresh foothill ozone. Then she dropped her hands,
palm upward, with the backs of her finger-tips resting on her eyes,
and felt that it was good to be alive.

They had been great times--wonderful times--these weeks spent in the
freedom and harmony of the Arthurses' household. Mr. and Mrs.
Arthurs--Uncle Fred and Aunt Lilian, as she now called them--had
opened their hearts and their home to Beulah from the first. Indeed,
the girl was often conscious of their gaze upon her, and at times she
would look up quickly and surprise a strange, wistful look of
yearning in their eyes--a look that they tried very hard to hide from
her. They wanted to leave her free to live her own life--to shape her
career, for a time at least, wholly in accordance with her impulses.

And such a life as she had lived! Arthurs had at once placed a horse
at her disposal, and with a fierce delight at the leap she was taking
through conventions she swung her right leg over the saddle and sat
to place like any man. Although born and raised on a farm, horseback
riding was to her something of a novelty, and the assumption of the
masculine position was a positive epoch in her career. How the people
of Plainville would have been scandalized if they could have
witnessed her shocking familiarity with