visit. While the street could be described as perfectly safe, it was
nevertheless an uncomfortable place in which to walk. Bostwick's car
had been recovered and brought into camp, but skilled as she was at the
steering wheel, she had hardly desired or dared to take it out.

Crime was frequent in the streets and houses. Disturbing reports of
marauding expeditions on the part of the convicts, still at large, came
with insistent frequency. Altogether the week had been a trial to her
nerves. It had also been a vexation. No man had a right, she told
herself, to do and say the things that Van had said and done, only to
go off, without so much as a little good-by and give no further sign.
She told herself she had a right to at least some sort of opportunity
to tender her honest congratulations. She had heard of his claim--the
"Laughing Water"--and perhaps she wished to know how it chanced to have
this particular name. If certain disturbing reflections anent that
woman who had run to him wildly, out in the street, came mistily
clouding the estimate she tried to place upon his character, she
confessed he certainly had the right to make an explanation. In a
purely feminine manner she argued that she had the right to some such
explanation--if only because of certain liberties he had taken with her
hands--on which memories still warmly burned.

Wholly undecided as to what she would do if she could, and impatient
with Bostwick for his sheer neglect in searching out her brother, she
was thoroughly glad to see him to-day when he came so unannounced to
the house.

"Well if you don't look like a mountaineer!" she said, as she met him
in the dining-room, which was likewise the parlor of the place. "Where
in the world have you been, all this time? You haven't come back
without Glen?"

He had gone away ostensibly to find her brother.

"Well, the fact is he wasn't where I went, after all," he said. "I
hastened home, after all that trip, undertaken for nothing, and found a
letter from him here. I've come at once to have an important talk."

"A letter?" she cried. "Let me see it--let me read it, please.
He's--where? He's well? He's successful?"

"Sit down," answered Bostwick, taking a chair and placing his hat on
the table. "There's a good deal to say. But first, how have you been
here, all alone?"

"Oh--very well--I suppose," she answered, restraining the natural
resentment she felt at his patent neglect. "It isn'