ge.

"You know how I got the letter?"

"Yes," said Breckenridge. "Miss Torrance must have inadvertently slipped
it into the wallet. You couldn't have done anything else, Larry; but the
affair is delicate and will want some handling. How are you going to get
the packet back?"

"Take it myself," Grant said quietly.

It was ten o'clock the next night, and Hetty Torrance and Miss Schuyler
sat talking in their little sitting-room. Torrance was away, but his
married foreman, who had seen service in New Mexico, and his wife, slept
in the house, and Cedar Range was strongly guarded. Now and then, the
bitter wind set the door rattling, and there was a snapping in the stove;
but when the gusts passed the ranch seemed very still, and Miss Schuyler
could hear the light tread of the armed cow-boy who, perhaps to keep
himself warm, paced up and down the hall below. There was another at a
window in the corridor, and one or two more on guard in the stores and
stables.

"Wasn't Chris Allonby to have come over to-day?" asked Miss Schuyler.

"Yes," said Hetty. "I'm sorry he didn't. I have a letter for the Sheriff
to give him, and wanted to get rid of the thing. It is important, and I
fancy, from what my father told me, if any of the homestead-boys got it
they could make trouble for us. Chris is to ride in with it and hand it to
the Sheriff."

"I wouldn't like a letter of that kind lying round," said Miss Schuyler.
"Where did you put it, Hetty?"

Hetty laughed. "Where nobody would ever find it--under some clothes of
mine. Talking about it makes one uneasy. Pull out the second drawer in the
bureau, Flo."

Miss Schuyler did so, and Hetty turned over a bundle of daintily
embroidered linen. Then, her face grew very grave, she laid each article
back again separately.

"Nothing there!" said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty's fingers quivered. "Pull the drawer out, Flo. No. Never mind
anything. Shake them out on the floor."

It was done, and a litter of garments lay scattered about them, but no
packet appeared, and Hetty sat down limply, very white in the face.

"It was there," she said, "by the wallet with the dollars. It must have
got inside somehow, and I sent the wallet to Larry. This is horrible,
Flo."

"Think!" said Miss Schuyler. "You couldn't have put it anywhere else?"

"No," said Hetty faintly. "If the wrong people got it, it would turn out
the Sheriff and make an outcry everywhere. That is what I was told, though
I don't know