already
veiling with color the ghostly pallor of the Sierras. As they looked at
it a great star shot forth from its brethren and fell. It did not fall
perpendicularly, but seemed for some seconds to slip along the slopes
of Black Spur, gleaming through the trees like a chariot of fire. It
pleased the child to say that it was the light of mamma's buggy that
was fetching her home, and it pleased the father to encourage the boy's
fancy. And talking thus in confidential whispers they fell asleep once
more, the father--himself a child in so many things--holding the smaller
and frailer hand in his.

They did not know that on the other side of the Divide the wife and
mother, scared, doubting, and desperate, by the side of her scared,
doubting, and desperate accomplice, was flying down the slope on her
night-long road to ruin. Still less did they know that, with the early
singing birds, a careless horseman, emerging from the trail as the
dust-stained buggy dashed past him, glanced at it with a puzzled air,
uttered a quiet whistle of surprise, and then, wheeling his horse, gayly
cantered after it.

CHAPTER V.

In the exercise of his arduous profession, Jack Hamlin had sat up all
night in the magnolia saloon of the Divide, and as it was rather early
to go to bed, he had, after his usual habit, shaken off the sedentary
attitude and prepared himself for sleep by a fierce preliminary
gallop in the woods. Besides, he had been a large winner, and on those
occasions he generally isolated himself from his companions to avoid
foolish altercations with inexperienced players. Even in fighting
Jack was fastidious, and did not like to have his stomach for a real
difficulty distended and vitiated by small preliminary indulgences.

He was just emerging from the wood into the highroad when a buggy dashed
past him, containing a man and a woman. The woman wore a thick veil; the
man was almost undistinguishable from dust. The glimpse was momentary,
but dislike has a keen eye, and in that glimpse Mr. Hamlin recognized
Van Loo. The situation was equally clear. The bent heads and averted
faces, the dust collected in the heedlessness of haste, the early
hour,--indicating a night-long flight,--all made it plain to him that
Van Loo was running away with some woman. Mr. Hamlin had no moral
scruples, but he had the ethics of a sportsman, which he knew Mr. Van
Loo was not. Whether the woman was an innocent schoolgirl or an actress,
he was sati