k yet from the lumber-camp. He had met them, as Carson had
predicted he would, riding in a close-packed, silent, ominous body. He
felt assured that they would find no work for them to do at the
company's office, that Carson was right and Trevors would "be on his
way." But he stopped at the bunk-house.

No, the boys hadn't come in yet. But there was a message for Lee, just
received by the cook. It was from Greene, the forester, brief and to
the point:

Greene had lost no time in finding the sheriff of the adjoining county
at White Rock and in going with him to the cave. They had found
Quinnion. He was dead, the manner of his death clearly indicated. For
he lay at the foot of the cliffs straight below the cave's mouth, his
face terribly torn and scratched by a mad woman's nails, the mad woman
herself lying huddled and still close beside him. He had allowed the
escape of her captive; she had accused him after the two of them had
gone back to the cavern, had thrown herself upon him, tearing at his
face, and the two had fallen. Mother and son? Lee shuddered, hoping
within his heart that Judith had been mistaken. It was too horrible.

But, such is youth, such is love. Bud Lee promptly forgot both Chris
Quinnion and Mad Ruth as he went through the lilacs to the house. He
remembered how Marcia had flown once to Pollock Hampton when he had
made a hero of himself, how again just to-day she had gone swiftly to
him because he had made a fool of himself and because it seemed she
loved him. In due time there was going to be a wedding at Blue Lake
ranch. A wedding! Just one? Lee hurried on.

Yes, Judith was waiting for him. She was there in the living-room,
curled up on a great couch, lifting her eyes expectantly as his step
sounded on the veranda. A wonderfully gowned, transcendently lovely
Judith; a Judith of bare white arms, round and warm and rich in their
tender curves; a Judith softly, alluringly feminine even in the eyes of
Bud Lee, no longer theorist; a Judith whose filmy gown clung
lingeringly to her like a sun-shot mist, a Judith whose tender mouth
was a red flower, whose eyes were Aphrodite's own, glorious, dawn-gray,
soft with the light shining in them, the unhidden light of love for the
man who came toward her swiftly; the Judith he had first held in his
arms and kissed.

He came in quickly, his heart singing. The color suddenly ran up hot
and vivid in the girl's cheeks. Standing over her he p