. And yet--she had not heard Veronica go
out of either door! She remembered that distinctly, but her first
impulse had been to wait until Veronica had gone out of the front door
and then look after her. It was impossible not to have heard the front
door open; one hinge was rusty and it emitted a dismal squeak every time
the door opened. But if she had gone out of the back door the others
would have seen her and would not have said that she was upstairs in her
room. That was the point which made Sahwah doubt her own memory.
Veronica had not left the house; she must have gone right upstairs. And
she must have said something else through the telephone and Sahwah's
ears had played her a trick. It was easy to have missed her in her
search through the big house; Sahwah had merely run into one room after
another, given a hasty glance around and then run on to the next.

Sahwah smoothed the brown satiny forehead lovingly, and laughed at
herself for a suspicious idiot. And yet, the occurrence would not go
from her mind, and she wakened in the night to think about it hour after
hour and when she did sleep she was oppressed with a constant feeling of
uneasiness, and woke again and again with that sense of groping after
something that had just occurred, but which had escaped her utterly.

Then the next morning her doubts all vanished once more when the
Winnebagos assembled on the front lawn for flag raising, and Veronica,
whose turn it was to hoist the Stars and Stripes, stepped out with
shining eyes, and with loving hands fastened the flag of her adopted
country to the waiting halyard, carefully keeping it from touching the
ground, and with an attitude both proud and humble sent it fluttering to
the top of the pole. Then she joined in the singing of the "Star
Spangled Banner" with all her soul in her voice.

Clearly her actions told more eloquently than any passionate words her
love and reverence for that flag and all it symbolized. No, it could not
be possible that she could be connected with anything that aimed to harm
it.

And yet--that very night Sahwah had seen Veronica leaving the house
after midnight when the rest were all asleep, and going down the hill
behind the barn, and at the sight Sahwah had experienced that same
indescribable chill of fear that she had felt in the train; a peculiar
sense of hovering danger; a sensation which she could never clearly
define while it lasted nor describe afterwards.

She still kept