attered through the ranches, where it was
impossible to trace them. But the belief was general that the prisoner
had not gone with them, that the sortie had only been a blind for his
escape in some less obvious direction, abetted by the half darkness.

That week the city was under strict surveillance and I went seldom upon
the street. For after my first relief at his escape was over, I was in
constant dread lest he be retaken or shot; and when I did have to be
out I went shrinkingly, dreading lest I see his face, haggard and
ghostly, gazing down at me from some window, or glimpse him retreating
up some evil alley.

"Oh, you are too good for this!" my heart accused him. "To think of
you slinking and hiding! I could forgive you anything, even killing
him--yes or even wanting to kill him--but not this running away! What
power is it that this woman has over you, when a little while before
you seemed so brave?"

The fear that it was because he loved her went through me, the
bitterest thought of all. Against it I treasured the one sentence he
had spoken to me, the only words I had ever heard him speak, and the
looks he had given--the gentleness which had consorted oddly with his
dark face and great strength, and that first shocked, reproachful gaze
which so haunted me; and then the way he had helped me, smilingly, over
the hard places in my testimony against him! How that had moved me!

Yet what were a few, frail glances beside the thing he had done for the
Spanish Woman? I saw her once driving upon the street. The glint of
her splendid hair made a crown around her head. She leaned back in the
carriage, smiling, looking happy and triumphant; and it was a strange
thought that these days so dreadful for me were good days for some one
else.

By the end of the week the theory that Johnny was hidden in the city
was abandoned, and search was directed toward the mining-camps, whence
from time to time came reports that he had been seen. But all of these
turned out to be false leads, and the idle talk about it swung into
just the channel that I had feared--how that of course he had been
guilty since he had tried to escape and had succeeded.

Whatever chance there had been for him before, chance of appeal or
chance of pardon, was gone now. It was as if he had sunk into a deep
pit, out of which he would never rise. I told myself that I must not
think about it, that surely he could not be anything to me any more;
and