's narrow soul had become
in these dreadful days. She knew now that she had set Shade Buckheath to
quarrel with Gray Stoddard--and Gray had never been seen since the hour
she sent the dangerous, unscrupulous man after him to that quarrel. With
this knowledge wrestled and fought the instinct we strive to develop in
our girl children, the fear we brand shamefully into their natures--her
name must not be connected with such an affair--she must not be
"talked about."

"Have they found him?" Lydia gasped. "Is he alive?"

Johnnie, generous soul, even in the intense preoccupation of her own
pain, could pity the woman who looked and spoke thus.

"No," she answered, "they haven't found him--and some that are looking
for him never will find him.

"Oh, Miss Lydia, I want you to help me make them send somebody that we
can trust up the Gap road, and on to the Unakas."

Miss Sessions flinched plainly.

"What do you know about it?" she inquired in a voice which shook.

Still staring at Johnnie, she moved back toward her bedroom door. "Why
should you mention the Gap road? What makes you think he went up in
the Unakas?"

"I--don't know that he went there," hesitated Johnnie. "But I do know
who you've got to find before you can find him. Oh, get somebody to go
with me and help me, before it's too late. I--" she hesitated--"I
thought maybe we could get your brother Hartley's car. I could run it--I
could run a car."

The bitterness that had racked Lydia Sessions's heart for more than
forty-eight hours culminated. She had been instrumental in putting Gray
Stoddard in mortal danger--and now if he was to be helped, assistance
would come through Johnnie Consadine! It was more than she could bear.

"I don't believe it!" she gasped. "You know who to find! You're just
getting up this story to be noticed. You're always doing things to
attract attention to yourself. You want to go riding around in an
automobile and--and--Mr. Stoddard has probably gone in to Watauga and
taken the midnight train for Boston. This looking around in the
mountains is folly. Who would want to harm him in the mountains?"

For a moment Johnnie stood, thwarted and non-plussed. The insults
directed toward herself made almost no impression on her, strangely as
they came from Lydia Sessions's lips. She was too intent on her own
purpose to care greatly.

"Shade Buckheath--" she began cautiously, intending only to state that
Shade had taken Stoddard's car; but Lydi