t that too. I don't see why, whenever a poor
criminal escapes, he always comes into _our_ mountains. I don't like to
'pack a gun'--unless I'm hunting. But Brian Oakley didn't scold me for
that, though--he knows I always do as he says. He scolded because I hadn't
told you about my going to see Mr. King, in the spring glade." She
laughed, conscious of the color that was in her cheeks. "I told him it
didn't matter whether I told you or not, because he always knows every
single move I make, anyway."

"Why _didn't_ you tell me, dear?" asked the woman. "You never kept
anything from me, before--I'm sure."

"Why dearest," the girl answered frankly, "I don't know, myself, why I
didn't tell you"--which, Myra Willard knew, was the exact truth.

Then Sibyl told her foster-mother everything about her acquaintance with
the artist and Conrad Lagrange--from the time she first watched the
painter, from the arbor in the rose garden, where she met the novelist;
until that afternoon, when she had invited them to supper, the next day.
Only of her dancing before the artist, the girl did not tell.

Later in the evening, Sibyl--saying that she would sing Myra to
sleep--took her violin to the porch, outside the window; and in the dusk
made soft music until the woman's troubled heart was calmed. When the moon
came up from behind the Galenas, across the canyon, the girl tiptoed into
the house, to bend over the sleeping woman, in tender solicitude. With
that mother tenderness belonging to all true women, she stooped and
softly kissed the disfigured face upon the pillow. At the touch, Myra
Willard stirred uneasily; and the girl--careful to make no
sound--withdrew.

On the porch, she again took up her violin as if to play; but, instead,
sat motionless--her face turned down the canyon--her eyes looking far
away. Then, quickly, she put aside the instrument, and--as though with
sudden yielding to some inner impulse--slipped out into the grassy yard.
And there, in the moon's white light,--with only the mountains, the trees,
and the flowers to see,--she danced, again, as she had danced before the
artist in the glade--with her face turned down the canyon, and her arms
outstretched, longingly, toward the camp in the sycamores back of the old
orchard.

Suddenly, from the room where Myra Willard slept, came that shuddering,
terror-stricken cry.

The girl, fleet-footed as a deer, ran into the house. Kneeling, she put
her strong young arms about the co