pocket. It had shifted somehow. Kate always had an eye like a
hawk. With one spring she pounced upon it, and before I could interfere
opened and read it! It was Gracey Storefield's. She stood for one moment
and glared in my face. I thought she had gone mad. Then she threw the
bit of paper down and trampled upon it, over and over again.

'So, Dick Marston,' she cried out hoarsely, her very voice changed, 'you
have tricked me a second time! Your own Gracey! your own Gracey! and
this, by the date, at the very time you were letting me persuade myself,
like a fool, like an idiot that I was, that you still care for me! You
have put the cap to your villainy now. And, as God made me, you shall
have cause--good cause--to fear the woman you have once betrayed and
twice scorned. Look to yourself.'

She gazed at me for a moment with a face from which every trace of
expression had vanished, except that of the most devilish fury and
spite--the face of an evil spirit more than of a woman; and then she
walked slowly away. I couldn't help pitying her, though I cursed my own
folly, as I had done a thousand times, that I had ever turned my head
or spoken a word to her when first she crossed my path. I got into the
street somehow; I hardly knew what to think or to do. That danger
was close at our heels I didn't doubt for a moment. Everything seemed
changed in a minute. What was going to happen? Was I the same Dick
Marston that had been strolling up Main Street a couple of hours ago?
All but off by the to-morrow evening's coach, and with all the world
before me, a good round sum in the bank; best part of a year's hard,
honest work it was the price of, too.

Then all kinds of thoughts came into my head. Would Kate, when her burst
of rage was over, go in for revenge in cold blood? She could hardly
strike me without at the same time hurting Jeanie through Jim. Should
I trust her? Would she come right, kiss, and make friends, and call
herself a madwoman--a reckless fool--as she'd often done before? No; she
was in bitter earnest this time. It did not pay to be slack in making
off. Once we had been caught napping, and once was enough.

The first thing to do was to warn Jim--poor old Jim, snoring away, most
like, and dreaming of taking the box-seat for himself and Jeanie at the
agent's next morning. It seemed cruel to wake him, but it would have
been crueller not to do so.

I walked up the narrow track that led up to the little gully with the