f the window, rearranged the curtain so that, while
it permitted the light to pass out, it left the room in shadow. He then
opened the door softly, locked it behind him, and passed noiselessly
into the hall. Susy's and Mrs. McClosky's rooms were at the further end
of the passage, but between them and the boudoir was the open patio, and
the low murmur of the voices of servants, who still lingered until he
should dismiss them for the night. Turning back, he moved silently down
the passage, until he reached the narrow arched door to the garden.
This he unlocked and opened with the same stealthy caution. The rain had
recommenced. Not daring to risk a return to his room, he took from a
peg in the recess an old waterproof cloak and "sou'wester" of Peyton's,
which still hung there, and passed out into the night, locking the
door behind him. To keep the knowledge of his secret patrol from the
stablemen, he did not attempt to take out his own horse, but trusted to
find some vacquero's mustang in the corral. By good luck an old "Blue
Grass" hack of Peyton's, nearest the stockade as he entered, allowed
itself to be quickly caught. Using its rope headstall for a bridle,
Clarence vaulted on its bare back, and paced cautiously out into the
road. Here he kept the curve of the long line of stockade until he
reached the outlying field where, half hidden in the withered, sapless,
but still standing stalks of grain, he slowly began a circuit of the
casa.

The misty gray dome above him, which an invisible moon seemed to have
quicksilvered over, alternately lightened and darkened with passing
gusts of fine rain. Nevertheless he could see the outline of the broad
quadrangle of the house quite distinctly, except on the west side,
where a fringe of writhing willows beat the brown adobe walls with their
imploring arms at every gust. Elsewhere nothing moved; the view was
uninterrupted to where the shining, watery sky met the equally shining,
watery plain. He had already made a half circuit of the house, and was
still noiselessly picking his way along the furrows, muffled with soaked
and broken-down blades, and the velvety upspringing of the "volunteer"
growth, when suddenly, not fifty yards before him, without sound or
warning, a figure rode out of the grain upon the open crossroad, and
deliberately halted with a listless, abstracted, waiting air. Clarence
instantly recognized one of his own vacqueros, an undersized half-breed,
but he as instant