llow. The night wind had brought more snow
with it, to make a silent pad upon the sidewalks and to outline to
Fairchild more easily the figure which slouched before him. Gradually
Robert dropped farther and farther in the rear; it gave him that much
more protection, that much more surety in trailing his quarry to
wherever he might be bound.

And it was a certainty that the destination was not home. Squint
Rodaine passed the street leading to his house without even looking up.
Two blocks more, and they reached the city limits. But Squint kept on,
and far in the rear, watching carefully every move, Fairchild followed
his quarry's shadow.

A mile, and they were in the open country, crossing and recrossing the
ice-dotted Clear Creek. A furlong more, then Fairchild went to his
knees that he might use the snow for a better background. Squint
Rodaine had turned up the lane which led to a great, shambling, old,
white building that, in the rosy days of the mining game, had been a
roadhouse with its roulette wheels, its bar, its dining tables and its
champagne, but which now, barely furnished in only a few of its rooms,
inhabited by mountain rats and fluttering bats and general decay for
the most part, formed the uncomfortable abode of Crazy Laura!

And Fairchild followed. It could mean only one thing when Rodaine
sought the white-haired, mumbling old hag whom once he had called his
wife. It could mean but one outcome, and that of disaster for some
one. Mother Howard had said that Crazy Laura would kill for Squint.
Fairchild felt sure that once, at least, she had lied for him, so that
the name of Thornton Fairchild might be branded as that of a murderer
and that his son might be set down in the community as a person of
ill-intent and one not to be trusted. And now that Squint Rodaine was
seeking her once more, Fairchild meant to follow, and to hear--if such
a thing were within the range of human possibility--the evil drippings
of his crooked lips.

He crossed to the side of the road where ran the inevitable gully and
taking advantage of the shelter, hurried forward, smiling grimly in the
darkness at the memory of the fact that things were now reversed; that
he was following Squint Rodaine as Rodaine once had followed him.
Swiftly he moved, closer--closer; the scar-faced man went through the
tumble-down gate and approached the house, not knowing that his pursuer
was less than fifty yards away!

A moment of cautious