ried.

"Winifred? No," he called, back.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, breathless. She never noticed that
he had called her by name. The abruptness of her own question was
evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not
yet entirely grasped. Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the
occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her
tidings.

"Winifred has gone out since dark. Whether she is alone or not I don't
know, but she has gone to the mountain. She means to climb it to-night
because they have told her that--that----"

His lady-love stopped. Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when
she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such
sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this
fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so
dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.

"How do you know?" His words were brief and stern.

She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement. As he kept up
with her he perceived, more by quickness of sympathy than by any sign,
that, in her effort to speak, she had begun to weep. She walked erect,
giving no heed to her own tears nor lifting a hand to wipe them, only at
first her throat refused to articulate a reply, and when she spoke it
was quickly, a word or two at a time, as though she feared her voice
would be traitor to her.

"She left a paper for me." And then she added, "She wrote on it--what
she was afraid to say--dear child!"

He was silent a moment, listening with bowed head lest she should tell
more. He thought he saw her now dash the tears from her face. She was
walking fast, and he felt that she must not go further, also that he had
no time to lose; so he told her hastily that he thought his housekeeper
had gone also to the mountain, and why he thought so. He said that he
hoped and believed Winifred would be with her, and that it was not many
minutes since they had driven away. He would go at once, hoping to
overtake them on the difficult ascent, and Miss Rexford, he said, must
go home and send her father and brother to aid him in his search.

She never stopped in her steady walk. "You know they are not at home."

He was shocked to remember it. "Never mind!" he cried, "I will go with
your authority. I will bring her back."

Still she did not waver in her walk. She spoke thickly out of her tears.
"You may go to find thi