ut not so far that the two on horseback, riding so
eagerly, were out of her view. The road dipped into the hollow.
the galloping horsemen disappeared with it. Susan shifted her
gaze to the point on the brow of the hill where the road
reappeared. She was quivering in every nerve. When they came
into view again she would know.

The place she was watching swam before her eyes. Suddenly the
two, still at a gallop, rose upon the crest of the hill. Jeb and
her Uncle Zeke! Her vision cleared, her nerve steadied.

They did not draw rein until they were at the road gate of the
little house. The woman rose, put down her knitting in the seat
of her stiff, rush-bottomed rocker, advanced to the fence. The
air was still, but Susan could not hear a sound, though she
craned forward and strained her ears to the uttermost. She
shrank as if she had been struck when the three began to gaze up
at the rock--to gaze, it seemed to her, at the very spot where
she was standing. Was her screen less thick than she thought?
Had they seen--if not her, perhaps part of her dress?

Wildly her heart beat as Jeb dismounted from his horse the mare
behind which she had made her wedding journey--and stood in the
gateway, talking with the woman and looking toward the top of
the rock. Zeke Warham turned his horse and began to ride slowly
away. He got as far as the brow of the hill, with Jeb still in
the gateway, hesitating. Then Susan heard:

"Hold on, Mr. Warham. I reckon you're right."

Warham halted his horse, Jeb remounted and joined him. As the
woman returned toward the back doorstep, the two men rode at a
walk down into the hollow. When they reappeared it was on the
road by which they had come. And the girl knew the pursuit in
that direction--the right direction--was over. Trembling and
with a fluttering in her breast like the flapping of a bird's
wings, she sank to the ground. Presently she burst into a
passion of tears. Without knowing why, she tore off the wedding
ring which until then she had forgotten, and flung it out among
the treetops. A few minutes, and she dried her eyes and stood
up. The two horsemen were leaving the landscape at the point at
which they had entered it. The girl would not have known, would
have been frightened by, her own face had she seen it as she
watched them go out of her sight--out of her life. She did not
understand herself, for she was at that age when one is no more
conscious of the for