f dark hair covered the pillow. The form shook with sobs.

Rathburn laid a gentle hand upon the shoulder, and the face, which was
quickly turned to him, was the face of a girl--the girl he had first
seen when coming into the town, the girl who had been sitting the
horse listening to Carlisle's tirade, the girl the barn man had said
was supposed to be Carlisle's sister.

"They don't know you were up there," said Rathburn softly. "Your boy's
clothes fooled them, if they saw you at all. They probably thought I
was carrying Sautee down the trail, for they found Sautee up there in
the powder house with me."

The girl sobbed again. Her eyes were red with weeping.

"Listen, ma'am," said Rathburn gently. "I picked these up from the
road the day the truck driver was held up." He brought out two
hairpins from his coat pocket.

"It set me to thinking, ma'am, an' was one reason why I stayed over
here to find out what was goin' on. Maybe I've done wrong, ma'am, but
I was hoping I'd be doin' you a favor. I saw the look in your eyes the
day Carlisle was talkin' to you when you was on the hoss. I know you
helped him in his holdups, dressed like a boy, but I figured you
didn't do it because you wanted to."

"No--no--no!" sobbed the girl.

"All right; fine, little girl. No one knows anything about it but me,
an' I'm goin' away. But, listen, girlie, just what was Carlisle to
you?"

A spasm of weeping shook the girl. "Nothing I could help," she sobbed.
"He--I had to do as he said--because--oh, I hate him. I hate him!"

"There, there," soothed Rathburn. "I suspected as much, girlie."

"He made my father a bad man," sobbed the girl; "an' made me go with
him or my father would have to go--to--to go----"

"Never mind, girlie," Rathburn interrupted softly. "I don't want to
hear the story. Just keep it to yourself an' start all over. It ain't
a bad world, girlie, an' there's more good men in it than there's bad.
Now, you can begin to live and be happy like you ought. Carlisle won't
worry you no more."

She raised her head and looked at him out of startled eyes in which
there was a ray of hope.

"You say--he won't--worry me----"

"Not at all, girlie. He walked into his own trap. I'm goin', girlie.
So long, an' good luck."

He took her hand and pressed it, and under the spell of his smile the
hope came into her welling eyes.

"Good-by," he called from the doorway.

She was smiling faintly through her tears when he slipped out