on as Worth shows up; and that must be soon, now."

"Yes," Barbara agreed. Her face clouded a little. "You noticed in
Skeet's letter that they're expecting Ina to-morrow."

Poor child--she couldn't get away from it. I patted the hand I had taken
to say good-by and assured her again,

"Worth Gilbert hasn't been in the south. I wonder at you, Barbara.
You're so clear headed about everything else--don't you see that that
would be impossible?"

Then I drove back to my office, to find lying on my desk a telegram from
the young man, dated at Los Angeles, requesting me to meet him at Santa
Ysobel the following evening!

CHAPTER XVII

CLEANSING FIRES

Wednesday evening I pulled into a different Santa Ysobel: lanterns
strung across between the buildings, bunting and branches of bloom
everywhere, streets alive with people milling around, and cars piled
high with decorative material, crowded with the decorators. The carnival
of blossoms was only three days ahead.

At Bill Capehart's garage they told me Barbara was out somewhere with
the crowd; and a few minutes later on Main Street, I met her in a Ford
truck. Skeet Thornhill was at the wheel, adding to the general risk of
life and limb on Santa Ysobel streets, carrying a half a dozen or more
other young things tucked away behind. Both girls shouted at me; they
were going somewhere for something and would see me later.

Getting down toward the Gilbert place, just beyond the corner, I flushed
from the shadows of the pepper trees a bird I knew to be one of
Dykeman's operatives. Watching his carefully careless progress on past
the Gilbert lawn, then the Vandeman grounds, my eye was led to a pair
who approached across the green from the direction of the bungalow. No
mistaking the woman; even at this distance, height and the clean sweep
of her walk, told me that this was the bride, Ina Vandeman. And the man
strolling beside her--had he come with her from the house, or joined
her on the cross-cut path?--could that be Worth Gilbert?

I sat in the roadster and gaped. The evening light--behind them, and dim
enough at best--made their countenances fairly indistinguishable. At the
gap in the hedge, they paused, and Mrs. Vandeman reached out, broke off
a flower to fasten in his buttonhole, looking up into his face, talking
quickly. Old stuff--but always good reliable old stuff. Then Worth saw
me and hailed, "Hello, Jerry!" But he did not come to me, and I swung
out of the m