t before
the stern anxiety for Tia Juana's safety.

The story which Willa succeeded in dragging from the Rodriguez woman
and Jose was simple on the face of it, yet many possible complexities
presented themselves to the girl's vivid imagining. Tia Juana had
seemed contented enough in her new abode for the first day, taking a
childish pleasure in the novelty of her surroundings, but later she had
become depressed and sunk into a moody silence save that now and then
she muttered ominously to herself and made strange gestures with her
claw-like hands.

Jose she had driven from her harshly, only to seize and draw him close,
and on the previous day she had eaten nothing, but crouched through the
long hours before the glowing coals of her grate. At twilight she had
demanded a large cooking pot which she placed upon the fire, and with
an earthenware jar of liquid and sundry packets of herbs from the
conglomerate heap of her luggage, she had brewed a concoction that
piqued her landlady's curiosity.

It had not pleased Tia Juana, however, and after glowering darkly into
its depths, she had flung it, pot and all, from the window down into
the back yard.

She had retired passively enough, but when the Senora Rodriguez came
with her morning coffee, the room was empty. There were no signs of a
struggle, the silence had remained unbroken throughout the night, and
the front door was found to have been unfastened from the inside,
although the Senora Rodriguez asserted that she had locked and bolted
it before retiring.

This argued that Tia Juana had of her own volition slipped away from
the house on some unknown mission, but to Willa such an hypothesis
seemed unlikely. In the first place, the old woman was heart and soul
in the plan in which Willa herself was the moving spirit, and well
content to leave all things to the guidance of her idolized young
friend. Then, too, she had the dread of the strange new city of one
who had followed a long and open trail and would scarcely in her right
mind have ventured forth to brave it on her own initiative. Had some
cajoling or threatening message reached her which induced her to play
into Wiley's hands, or could it be that Senora Rodriguez had been
bribed to aid in her abduction?

Fierce and implacable as Tia Juana's will was, age had taken its toll
of her mental strength and resiliency, and Willa shuddered to think of
the coercion which might be brought to bear upon her bewildered