months ago. Undoubtedly, those who had known him and passed
the cabin clearing took it for granted that the little grave was that
of his daughter, Louise, but these documents, found among Frank
Hillery's private papers after his death, bear witness in crude but
unmistakable fashion to the agreement between the two men and the
adoption of little Louise by Gentleman Geoff."

Mason North seated himself once more with a gesture of relief that the
bomb was exploded, and all eyes turned to Willa.

"How is it, then, that I remember the fire in which my mother was
destroyed?" She was wholly innocent of an intention to defend her
position, but asked her question in the first bewildering shock,
unconscious of the fact which her form of speech betrayed, that she
could not all at once disassociate herself from the identity she had
accepted only a few short weeks before. "Why, I even recall vaguely a
song which the woman I supposed must have been my mother used to sing
all the time, though I cannot quite bring it back to my mind. I am
sure if I heard it once, I should remember!"

The attorney visibly hesitated, and it was Ripley Halstead who replied
as gently as possible:

"Often one believes that one can recall experiences of their very early
years which they have actually learned from hearsay, from countless
repetition in their presence."

"But Dad never spoke of that time in Nevada; he never once referred to
it to the very hour of his death! I recall vaguely being lost in the
snow and I have often heard Dad speak of Hillery's kindness and care;
he used to say that the trapper had saved both our lives. A number of
people in Limasito have heard the story from his own lips, Jim Baggott
and Henry Bailey and Rufe Terwilliger--but Rufe is dead now, he was
killed in El Negrito's raid----"

She paused as if a hand had closed suddenly about her throat, while a
tiny patch of color crept into each cheek and her eyes, large and
luminous and swiftly keen, sought Starr Wiley's. Her clasped hands
tightened, then relaxed and a little smile hovered about her lips once
more; a coolly calculating, somewhat grim little smile. The story had
engrossed her for the moment to the exclusion of all else, but mention
of the raid recalled her sharply to the presence of its instigator.

Wiley's vague threats were plain to her now, his purpose practically
achieved. He had kept his word, he had exposed her, but was her early
memory indeed tric