eeping morning, she saw him again,
standing that moment with her glove to his lips; saw him bend and
speed away, the cunning of his hunted ancestors in his swift feet and
self-eliminating form. A wild fear struck her, a cold dread fell like
ashes into her heart, as she wondered how well he had ridden that
night, and how far.

Perhaps he was lying in his blood that hour, never to come back to her
again. Yet, why should it matter so much to her? Only that it was a
gallant life gone out, whatever its faults had been; only the interest
that she might have in any man who had danced with her, and told her
his story, and spoken of his designs. So she said, confessing with the
same breath that it was a poor, self-deluding lie.

Back again in her home at the post, the day awake around her, reveille
sounding in the barracks, she turned the key in her door as if to shut
the secret in with her, and bent beneath the strain of her long
suspense. She no longer tried to conceal, or to deny to her own heart,
the love she bore that man, which had come so suddenly, and so
fiercely sweet.

No longer past than the evening before her heart had ached with
jealous pain over the little triumph that Nola Chadron had thought she
was making of Major King. Now Nola might have Major King, and all the
world beside that her little head might covet. There was no
reservation in the surrender that she made of him in her conscience,
no regret.

She reproached herself for it in one breath, and glowed with a strange
new gladness the next, clasping the great secret fearfully in her
breast, in the world-old delusion that she had come into possession of
a treasure uniquely and singularly her own. One thing she understood
plainly now; she never had loved Major King. What a revolution it was
to overturn a life's plans thus in a single night! thought she.

How easily we are astounded by the eruptions in our own affairs, and
how disciplined in the end to find that the foundations of the world
have withstood the shock!

Chadron himself had not gone out after Macdonald. He had been merry
among his guests long after the shots had sounded up the river.
Frances believed that the old man had put the matter into the hands of
his cowboys and ranch foreman, having no sons, no near male relatives
of his own in that place. She did not know how many had gone in
pursuit of Macdonald, but several horses were in the party which rode
out of the gate. None had returned, sh