rtable laziness?"

Colston laughed. He was still very neatly dressed, but he looked harder
than he had when he first reached the prairie and his face was brown.

"I'm content, and that's a great thing," he rejoined. "Indeed, I'll
confess that I could enjoy our stay here, except for the damping effect
of our friends' trouble. It's astonishing how little one misses the
comforts we insist on in England, and I'm coming to take an interest in
the visits we pay among the ranches and our weekly trip to Sebastian.
Then nobody could maintain that your sister looks any the worse for her
experience. I'm beginning to think she might pass for a wheat-grower's
wife."

"I heard Mrs. Johnson ask when you were going to take a farm," Muriel
retorted. "It would be difficult to imagine you tramping down a furrow
behind a plow or driving one of those smelly gasoline tractors; but
you'll be able to pose before your constituents as an authority on
colonial questions when you go home."

"I'm afraid they'll throw me over unless they see me soon; but there's
nothing else to take me back, and I'd feel we were deserting our friends
in their distress."

"We can't leave them yet," Mrs. Colston broke in. "The suspense is
preying upon Jernyngham. He's getting dangerously moody; I know Gertrude
feels anxious about him."

A curious expression crept into Muriel's eyes.

"Believing what he does, it's natural that he should clamor for justice,
but he's becoming possessed by a feverish cruelty. It's mastering him,
destroying his judgment."

"You're alluding to his suspicions of Prescott?"

Muriel's eyes sparkled as she took up the challenge.

"You know as well as I do that they're altogether wrong! It's impossible
that he should be guilty!"

"One would like to think so," her sister responded with dry reserve. "But
it's a pity he ran away."

Muriel could not deny this. She had retained her faith in Prescott, but
his silence about the motive for an absence that must tell against him
troubled her. It was strange that he had given her no hint, and she felt
hurt.

"He may have gone because he could not bear to be distrusted," she said.
"You are both sorry for Jernyngham, but don't you think the man he
unjustly suspects deserves some pity?"

"Well," said Colston, "I've tried to keep an open mind. Prejudice, of
course, should not be pandered to; but one is as likely to be led astray
by too strong a partiality for the suspected person." He paused