eat, raced her pulses again. At
the sound she had made on the driveway, he had turned to her as a
hunted thing, cornered, desperate, certain that whoever came must be
against him. His cry to her had recognized her as the only one who
could come and not be against him; it had hailed her with relief as
bringing him help. He could not have cried out so at that instant at
sight of her if he had been guilty of what they had accused. Now she
saw too, as he faced her, blood flowing over his face; blood soaked a
shoulder of his coat, and his left arm dangling at his side; but now,
as he threw back his head and straightened in his relief at finding it
was she who had surprised him, she saw in him an exultation and
excitement she had never seen before--something which her presence
alone could not have caused. To-night, she sensed vaguely, something
had happened to him which had changed his attitude toward her and
everything else.

"Yes; it's I!" she cried quickly and rushed to him. "It's I! It's I!"
wildly she reassured him. "You're hurt!" She touched his shoulder.
"You're hurt! I knew you were!"

He pushed her back with his right hand and held her away from him.
"Did they hurt your father?"

"Hurt Father? No."

"But Mr. Blatchford--"

"Dead," she answered dully.

"They killed him, then!"

"Yes; they--" She iterated. He was telling her
now--unnecessarily--that he had had nothing to do with it; it was the
others who had done that.

He released her and wiped the blood from his eyes with the heel of his
hand. "The poor old man," he said, "--the poor old man!"

She drew toward him in the realization that he could find sympathy for
others even in such a time as this.

"Where's the key?" he demanded of her. He stared over her again but
without surprise even in his eyes, at her state; if she was there at
all at that time, that was the only way she could have come.

"The key?"

"The key for the battery and magneto--the key you start the car with."

She ran to a shelf and brought it to him; he used it and pressed the
starting lever. The engine started and he sprang to the seat. His
left arm still hanging useless at his side; he tried to throw in the
gears with his right hand; but the mechanism of the car was strange to
him. She leaped up beside him.

"Move over!" she commanded. "It's this way!"

He slipped to the side and she took the driving seat, threw in the
gears expertly, and the car shot from