til noon of the next day, when
she would call for it and have it added to her bank account. She slowly
walked home, for the visit to the swamp had brought back full force the
experience of the morning. Again and again she examined the crude little
note, for she did not know what it meant, yet it bred vague fear. The
only thing of which Elnora knew herself afraid was her mother; when with
wild eyes and ears deaf to childish pleading, she sometimes lost control
of herself in the night and visited the pool where her husband had sunk
before her, calling his name in unearthly tones and begging of the swamp
to give back its dead.

CHAPTER VI

WHEREIN MRS. COMSTOCK INDULGES IN "FRILLS," AND BILLY REAPPEARS

It was Wesley Sinton who really wrestled with Elnora's problem while
he drove about his business. He was not forced to ask himself what it
meant; he knew. The old Corson gang was still holding together. Elder
members who had escaped the law had been joined by a younger brother of
Jack's, and they met in the thickest of the few remaining fast places
of the swamp to drink, gamble, and loaf. Then suddenly, there would be a
robbery in some country house where a farmer that day had sold his
wheat or corn and not paid a visit to the bank; or in some neighbouring
village.

The home of Mrs. Comstock and Elnora adjoined the swamp. Sinton's land
lay next, and not another residence or man easy to reach in case of
trouble. Whoever wrote that note had some human kindness in his breast,
but the fact stood revealed that he feared his strength if Elnora were
delivered into his hands. Where had he been the previous night when
he heard that prayer? Was that the first time he had been in such
proximity? Sinton drove fast, for he wished to reach the swamp before
Elnora and the Bird Woman would go there.

At almost four he came to the case, and dropping on his knees studied
the ground, every sense alert. He found two or three little heel prints.
Those were made by Elnora or the Bird Woman. What Sinton wanted to learn
was whether all the remainder were the footprints of one man. It was
easily seen, they were not. There were deep, even tracks made by fairly
new shoes, and others where a well-worn heel cut deeper on the inside of
the print than at the outer edge. Undoubtedly some of Corson's old gang
were watching the case, and the visits of the women to it. There was no
danger that any one would attack the Bird Woman. She never wen