eft. She could not part with
them, unless perhaps some one would take the ring and keep it until she
could buy it back. But she would wait and hope.

She walked by the old butler with her hand on her pistol. She did not
intend to let any one detain her now. He bowed pleasantly, and opened the
door for her, however; and she marched down the steps to her horse. But
just as she was about to mount and ride away into the unknown where no
grandmother, be she Brady or Bailey, would ever be able to search her out,
no matter how hard she tried, the door suddenly opened again, and there
was a great commotion. The maid and the old butler both flew out, and laid
hands upon her. She dropped the bridle, and seized her pistol, covering
them both with its black, forbidding nozzle.

They stopped, trembling, but the butler bravely stood his ground. He did
not know why he was to detain this extraordinary young person, but he felt
sure something wrong. Probably she was a thief, and had taken some of
Madam's jewels. He could call the police. He opened his mouth to do so
when the maid explained.

"Madam wants you to come back. She didn't understand. She wants to see you
and ask about her son. You must come, or you will kill her. She has heart
trouble, and you must not excite her."

Elizabeth put the pistol back into its holster and, picking up the bridle
again, fastened it in the ring, saying simply, "I will come back."

"What do you want?" she asked abruptly when she returned to the bedroom.

"Don't you know that's a disrespectful way to speak?" asked the woman
querulously. "What did you have to get into a temper for, and go off like
that without telling me anything about my son? Sit down, and tell me all
about it."

"I'm sorry, grandmother," said Elizabeth, sitting down. "I thought you
didn't want me and I better go."

"Well, the next time wait until I send you. What kind of a thing have you
got on, anyway? That's a queer sort of a hat for a girl to wear. Take it
off. You look like a rough boy with that on. You make me think of John
when he had been out disobeying me."

Elizabeth took off the offending headgear, and revealed her smoothly
parted, thick brown hair in its long braid down her back.

"Why, you're rather a pretty girl if you were fixed up," said the old
lady, sitting up with interest now. "I can't remember your mother, but I
don't think she had fine features like that."

"They said I looked like father," said Elizabe