ing her suddenly, with his first angry gesture.
"We want an end to these airs and grimaces, and all this dandy nigger
business; we want an end to this 'cake-walking' through the wheat, and
flouting of the honest labor of your betters. We want you and your 'de
Fontanges' to climb down. And we want an end to this roping-in of white
folks to suit your little game; we want an end to your trying to mix
your nigger blood with any one here, and we intend to stop it. We draw
the line at the major."

Lashed as she had been by those words apparently out of all semblance of
her former social arrogance, a lower and more stubborn resistance seemed
to have sprung up in her, as she sat sideways, watching him with her set
smile and contracting eyes.

"Ah," she said dryly, "so SHE IS HERE. I thought so. Which of you is it,
eh? It's a good spec--Mallory's a rich man. She's not particular."

The man had stopped as if listening, his head turned towards the road.
Then he turned carelessly, and facing her again, waved his hand with a
gesture of tired dismissal, and said, "Go! You'll find your driver over
there by the tool-shed. He has heard nothing yet--but I've given you
fair warning. Go!"

He walked slowly back towards the shed, as the woman, snatching up
the reins, drove violently off in the direction where the men had
disappeared. But she turned aside, ignoring her waiting driver in her
wild and reckless abandonment of all her old conventional attitudes, and
lashing her horse forward with the same set smile on her face, the same
odd relaxation of figure, and the same squaring of her elbows.

Avoiding the main road, she pushed into a narrow track that intersected
another nearer the scene of the accident to Rose's buggy three weeks
before. She had nearly passed it when she was hailed by a strange voice,
and looking up, perceived a horseman floundering in the mazes of the
wheat to one side of the track. Whatever mean thought of her past life
she was flying from, whatever mean purpose she was flying to, she pulled
up suddenly, and as suddenly resumed her erect, aggressive stiffness.
The stranger was a middle-aged man; in dress and appearance a dweller of
cities. He lifted his hat as he perceived the occupant of the wagon to
be a lady.

"I beg your pardon, but I fear I've lost my way in trying to make a
short cut to the Excelsior Company's Ranch."

"You are in it now," said Mrs. Randolph, quickly.

"Thank you, but where can I find th