emained and laid us down to sleep. That
wasn't much of a success, however. We had got into action again, with
more of a chance to bring about certain desired results, and inevitably
we laid awake reckoning up the chances for and against a happy
conclusion to our little expedition.

"It's a wonder," I said, as the thought occurred to me, "that Lyn quit
Walsh so soon. Why didn't she stay a while longer and see if these
famous preservers of the peace wouldn't manage to gather in the men who
killed her father? Why, hang it! she didn't even wait to see if you
found that stuff at the Stone--and Lessard must have told her that
somebody had gone to look for it."

Mac snapped out an oath in the dark. "Lessard simply lost his head," he
growled. "Damn him! He told her that he had sent us to look for it, and
that we had taken advantage of the opportunity to rob the paymaster. Oh,
he painted us good and black, I tell you. Then he had the nerve to ask
her to marry him. And he was so infernally insistent about it, that she
was forced to pull up and get away from the post in self-defense. That's
why she left so suddenly."

Well, I couldn't find it in my heart to blame Lessard for that last, so
long as he acted the gentleman about it. In fact, it was to be expected
of almost any man who happened to be thrown in contact with Lyn Rowan
for any length of time. I can't honestly lay claim to being absolutely
immune myself; only my attack had come years earlier, and had not been
virulent enough to make me indulge in any false hopes. It's no crime for
an unattached man to care for a woman; but naturally, MacRae would be
prejudiced against any one who laid siege to a castle he had marked for
his own. I had disliked that big, autocratic major, too, from our first
meeting, but it was pure instinctive antipathy on my part, sharpened,
perhaps, by his outrageous treatment of MacRae.

We dropped the subject forthwith. Lessard's relation to the problem was
a subject we had so far shied around. It was beside the point to indulge
in footless theory. We knew beyond a doubt who were the active agents in
every blow that had been struck, and the first move in the tangle we
sought to unravel was to lay hands on them, violently if necessary, and
through them recover the stolen money. Only by having that in our
possession--so MacRae argued--could we hope to gain credible hearing,
and when that was accomplished whatever part Lessard had played would
develop