as waiting in the hall upstairs, and
he just said a word or two and went on down."

"Poor devil!" Leslie said. "You see, he's in an unpleasant position, to
say the least. But here's a thought to go to sleep on. If you ask me,
he's keeping out of your way, not because he cares too little, but
because he cares too much."

Long after a repentant and chastened Leslie had gone to sleep, his arm
over Nina's unconscious shoulder, Elizabeth stood wide-eyed on the
tiny balcony outside her room. From it in daylight she could see
the Livingstone house. Now it was invisible, but an upper window was
outlined in the light. Very shyly she kissed her finger tips to it.

"Good-night, dear," she whispered.

XV

Louis Bassett had left for Norada the day after David's sudden illness,
but ten days later found him only as far as Chicago, and laid up in his
hotel with a sprained knee. It was not until the day Nina went back to
the little house in the Ridgely Road, having learned the first lesson of
married life, that men must not only be captured but also held, that he
was able to resume his journey.

He had chafed wretchedly under the delay. It was true that nothing in
the way of a story had broken yet. The Tribune had carried a photograph
of the cabin where Clark had according to the Donaldson woman spent the
winter following the murder, and there were the usual reports that he
had been seen recently in spots as diverse as Seattle and New Orleans.
But when the following Sunday brought nothing further he surmised that
the pack, having lost the scent, had been called off.

He confirmed this before starting West by visiting some of the offices
of the leading papers and looking up old friends. The Clark story was
dead for the time. They had run a lot of pictures of him, however, and
some one might turn him up eventually, but a scent was pretty cold in
ten years. The place had changed, too. Oil had been discovered five
years ago, and the old settlers had, a good many of them, cashed in and
moved away. The town had grown like all oil towns.

Bassett was fairly content. He took the night train out of Chicago and
spent the next day crossing Nebraska, fertile, rich and interesting. On
the afternoon of the second day he left the train and took a branch
line toward the mountains and Norada, and from that time on he became an
urbane, interested and generally cigar-smoking interrogation point.

"Railroad been here long?" he asked the con