ce when Clavering
had plotted Grant's arrest, and again when had she not done so it would
most assuredly have led to the destruction of the cattle-train. Mr.
Clavering came near making a horrible blunder on that occasion, and but
for Hetty's warning not a head of your stock would have reached Omaha."

Her tone carried conviction with it, as did the flash in her eyes, but
Torrance's smile was sardonic. "You would try to persuade me Larry saved
the train out of goodwill to us?"

"He did it, knowing what it was going to cost him, to prevent the men he
led starting on a course of outrage and lawlessness."

"And they have paid him for it!"

"I fancy that is outside the question," said Miss Schuyler. "Twice, when
every good impulse that is in our kind laid her under compulsion, Hetty
warned the man she loved, but at no other time did a word to your
prejudice pass her lips; and if she had spoken it Grant would not have
listened. Hetty was loyal, and he treated you with a fairness that none of
you merited. You sent the Sheriff a bribe and an order for his arrest, and
by inadvertence it fell into his hands. He brought it back here unopened
at his peril."

Torrance looked at her in astonishment. "He brought back my letter to the
Sheriff?"

"Yes. There was nothing else a man of that kind could have done."

Torrance stood silent for a space, and then, stooping, picked up a
half-burnt paper from the hearth, glanced at it with a curious expression,
and flung it into the embers. When it had charred away he turned to Miss
Schuyler.

"You have shown yourself a good friend," he said gravely. "Still, you may
understand the other side of the question if you listen to me."

He turned and pointed to an empty tin case, and the charred papers in the
hearth. "That is the end of the plans of half a lifetime--and they were
all for Hetty. I had no one else after her mother was taken from me, and I
scraped the dollars together for her, that she should have what her heart
could wish for, and the enjoyments her parents had never known; and while
I did so I and the others built up the prosperity of the cattle country.
We fed the railroads and built the towns, and when we would have rested,
Larry and his friends took hold. You see what they have made of it--a
great industry ruined, the country under martial law, its commerce
crippled, and the proclamation that can only mean disaster to us hung out
everywhere. My daughter turned against me--an