oxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll
tell him. I'll tell him myself." And animated with this intention to
forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and
into the house.

It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old
woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then
there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough
to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest
credentials--a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed
his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his
life should he resist arrest.

Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to
the barnyard.

It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep
cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the
fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern
where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe
it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place,
while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of
his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He
searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close
because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked
down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the
chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints
that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves
and moss--climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again
at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission
was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line
through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his
posse, following the circuitous mountain road.

Keenan's lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
and contempt of the futility of her effort. "They're there afore she
started!" he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the
sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring.
Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy
scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the wood