better than I do, but upon this road, wherever or to whatever it was
leading you--to-night you go no further!"

"Then I suppose I may return home," she said coldly. "Ezekiel will
accompany me back to protect me from--robbers. Come, Ezekiel. Mr.
Demorest and his friends can be safely trusted to take care of--your
horse."

And as the grinning Ezekiel sprang into the carriage beside her, she
pulled up the glass in the fateful and set face of her once trusting
husband; the carriage turned and drove off, leaving him like a statue in
the road.

*****

The bell of the North Liberty Second Presbyterian Church had just ceased
ringing. But in the last five years it had rung out the bass viol and
harmonium, and rung in an organ and choir; and the old austere interior
had been subjected at the hands of the rising generation to an invasion
of youthful warmth and color. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the
choir itself, where the bright spring sunshine, piercing a newly-opened
stained-glass window, picked out the new spring bonnet of Mrs. Demorest
and settled upon it during the singing of the hymn. Perhaps that was
the reason why a few eyes were curiously directed in that direction, and
that even the minister himself strayed from the precise path of doctrine
to allude with ecclesiastical vagueness to certain shining examples of
the Christian virtues that were "again in our midst." The shrewd face
and white eyelashes of Ezekiel Corwin, junior partner in the firm of
Dilworth & Dusenberry, of San Francisco, were momentarily raised
towards the choir, and then relapsed into an expression of fatigued
self-righteousness.

When the service was over a few worshipers lingered near the choir
staircase, mindful of the spring bonnet.

"It looks quite nat'ral," said Deacon Fairchild, "ter see Joan Salisbury
attendin' the ministration of the Word agin. And I ain't sorry she
didn't bring that second husband of hers with her. It kinder looks like
old times--afore Edward Blandford was gathered to the Lord."

"That's so," replied his auditor meekly, "and they do say ez ha'ow
Demorest got more powerful worldly and unregenerate in that heathen
country, and that Joan ez a professin' Christian had to leave him.
I've heerd tell thet he'd got mixed up, out thar, with some half-breed
outlaw, of the name o' Johnson, ez hez a purty, high-flyin' Mexican
wife. It was fort'nit for Joan that she found a friend in grace in
Brother Corwin to look art