sn't it? Good Lord, how young you are! You'd better
pray that the years may teach you a little human weakness. I tell you,
Mag sha'n't bear it all. Whoever's concerned in this thing shall suffer
with her."

"I am afraid," said Benoix, reluctantly, "that would be--rather a large
order."

"Oh! It isn't--love, then." For a moment Mrs. Kildare stared straight in
front of her. Then she wheeled her horse, the pity in her face hardened
into disgust. "Go on, will you? And tell the girls to save me some of
that ginger-bread."

"Where are you going?"

"To evict Mag Henderson."

He protested. "But why to-night? Surely one night more! It will be very
hard. Why not let Smith attend to it?"

She gave him a bleak little smile. "My dear boy, if I had left all the
hard things to my manager to do, Storm to-day would be just where Basil
Kildare left it."

She cantered back along the road and turned up a weed-grown lane, her
face set and frowning. Despite her words to Benoix, at times like this
she felt a very feminine need of a man, and scorned herself for the
feeling.

Coming to a whitewashed log-cabin overgrown with morning-glories--the
only crop the shiftless Hendersons had been able to raise--she pounded
on the closed door with the butt of her crop. She heard a faint sound
within, but nobody came to answer.

"I hear you in there. Don't keep me waiting, Mag."

Still no answer. But once again the faint sound came. It might have been
the whining of an animal.

Mrs. Kildare jumped impatiently from her horse, and a few well-aimed
blows of fist and knee sent the frail lock flying. The door was
barricaded within by a bureau and a table and chairs--Mag's poor little
defense, evidently, against the "Possum-Hunters."

"Where are you, my girl?" demanded Mrs. Kildare less impatiently,
pushing her way to the back room. "It's not night-riders. It's the
Madam."

A little slim creature, hardly more than a child, writhed on a cot in
the corner, her eyes bright and fixed like the eyes of a rabbit Kate had
once seen caught in a trap, both fists stuffed into her mouth to stifle
the groans that burst out in spite of them.

"Git out!" the girl panted fiercely. "Lemme be! I don' want none of ye
'round, not none of ye. You go way from here!"

The change in Mrs. Kildare's face was wonderful. "Why, child, what's the
matter?" she said gently, even as she stripped off her gauntlets. For
she knew very well what was the matter. In a widely sep