it. The door closed with a bang, and the next instant the vehicle was
whirling down the avenue, and turning around the first corner was
instantly lost to sight.

Quick as the lightning's flash Jack leaped upon a passing car. He felt
intuitively that the stranger was taking Dorothy to her home. This car
would pass the door. He would confront them there, even though they had
gone by another street.

By a strange fatality he had in his breast pocket a small revolver which
a friend had asked him to call for that day at a store where it was
being repaired, and bring to him, as Jack would be passing that way. It
was an unlucky moment for Jack, Heaven knows, when he consented to call
for the fatal revolver for his friend.

As his hand touched it in his breast pocket a terrible thought flashed
across his excited brain.

Ten minutes later he reached the cottage where Dorothy boarded. One of
the bindery girls was sitting on the porch as he came up.

"Why, hello, Jack!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"

"Where's Dorothy?" he interrupted, quickly. "Is she in the house yet? I
want the truth. You must tell me!"

The girl looked in Jack's face, and dared not tell him all.

CHAPTER III.

Jessie Staples--for it was she--looked at Jack Garner with troubled
eyes. She knew how much he cared for Dorothy, and she realized that it
would never do to tell him that his fickle sweetheart had gone riding
with another man. He was hot-tempered, and in jealousy there is little
reason. Like the wise girl that she was, Jessie made excuses for her
friend.

"No, Dorothy is not here, Jack," she said, presently; "but I feel sure
she would have been had she known you were coming. She has gone to spend
the evening with one of the girls, who sent her lover specially to bring
Dorothy over, with the request that he was not to come back without her;
and no doubt Dorothy will pass Sunday with her."

"Which one of the girls is it?" he inquired.

"I don't really know that," said Jessie, a little faintly.

Jack Garner drew a great, long breath of relief, and the old happy
smile lighted up his face in an instant.

What a foolish fellow he had been to mistrust Dorothy! he told himself.
But, after all, he was glad he had come and seen Jessie and thus had the
horrible doubt removed from his mind.

"Well, it does not matter so much, Jess, that I did not see her. I did
not want anything in particular. I am glad she will have a pleasant tim