nothing were wanting to
make the Girl perfectly happy; that there could be no room in her heart
for any feeling other than elation. And yet, curiously enough, the Girl
could not doze off to sleep. Some mysterious force--a vague foreboding
of something about to happen--impelled her to open her eyes again and
again.

It was an odd and wholly new sensation, this conjuring up of distressing
spectres, for no girl was given less to that sort of thing; all the
same, it was with difficulty that she checked an impulse to cry out to
her lover--whom she believed to be asleep--and make him dissipate, by
renewed assurances, the mysterious barrier which she felt was hemming
her in.

As for Johnson, the moment that his head had touched the pillows, he
fell to thinking of the awkward situation in which he was placed, the
many complications in which his heart had involved him and, finally, he
found himself wondering whether the woman whom he loved so dearly was
also lying sleepless in her rug on the floor.

And so it was not surprising that he should spring up the moment that he
heard cries from outside.

"Who's that knockin', I wonder?"

Although her voice showed no signs of distress or annoyance, the
question coming from her in a calm tone, the Girl was upon her feet
almost before she knew it. In a trice she removed all evidences that she
had been lying upon the floor, flinging the pillows and silk coverlet to
the wardrobe top.

In that same moment Johnson was standing in the parting of the curtains,
his hand raised warningly. In another moment he was over to the door
where, after taking his pistols from his overcoat pockets, he stood in a
cool, determined attitude, fingering his weapons.

"But some one's ben callin'," the Girl was saying, at the very moment
when above the loud roaring of the wind another knock was heard on the
cabin door. "Who can it be?" she asked as if to herself, and calmly went
over to the table, where she took up the candle and lit it.

Springing to her side, Johnson whispered tensely:

"Don't answer--you can't let anyone in--they wouldn't understand."

The Girl eyed him quizzically.

"Understand what?" And before he had time to explain, much less to check
her, she was standing at the window, candle in hand, peering out into
the night.

"Why, it's the posse!" she cried, wheeling round suddenly. "How did they
ever risk it in this storm?"

At these words a crushed expression appeared on Johnson's