t terrified Jane. When had silence been so infernal?

"She's--only--strayed--out--of earshot," faltered Jane, looking at
Lassiter.

Pale, rigid as a statue, the rider stood, not in listening, searching
posture, but in one of doomed certainty. Suddenly he grasped Jane with
an iron hand, and, turning his face from her gaze, he strode with her
from the knoll.

"See--Fay played here last--a house of stones an' sticks.... An' here's
a corral of pebbles with leaves for hosses," said Lassiter, stridently,
and pointed to the ground. "Back an' forth she trailed here.... See,
she's buried somethin'--a dead grasshopper--there's a tombstone... here
she went, chasin' a lizard--see the tiny streaked trail... she pulled
bark off this cottonwood... look in the dust of the path--the letters you
taught her--she's drawn pictures of birds en' hosses an' people.... Look,
a cross! Oh, Jane, your cross!"

Lassiter dragged Jane on, and as if from a book read the meaning of
little Fay's trail. All the way down the knoll, through the shrubbery,
round and round a cottonwood, Fay's vagrant fancy left records of her
sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she lingered round a bird-nest
to leave therein the gaudy wing of a butterfly. Long had she played
beside the running stream sending adrift vessels freighted with pebbly
cargo. Then she had wandered through the deep grass, her tiny feet
scarcely turning a fragile blade, and she had dreamed beside some old
faded flowers. Thus her steps led her into the broad lane. The little
dimpled imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust they went
a little way down the lane; and then, at a point where they stopped, the
great tracks of a man led out from the shrubbery and returned.

CHAPTER XX. LASSITER'S WAY

Footprints told the story of little Fay's abduction. In anguish Jane
Withersteen turned speechlessly to Lassiter, and, confirming her fears,
she saw him gray-faced, aged all in a moment, stricken as if by a mortal
blow.

Then all her life seemed to fall about her in wreck and ruin.

"It's all over," she heard her voice whisper. "It's ended. I'm
going--I'm going--"

"Where?" demanded Lassiter, suddenly looming darkly over her.

"To--to those cruel men--"

"Speak names!" thundered Lassiter.

"To Bishop Dyer--to Tull," went on Jane, shocked into obedience.

"Well--what for?"

"I want little Fay. I can't live without her. They've stolen her as they
stole Milly Erne's child.