ank
amazement.

It was his wife who was sitting there alone, pale, erect, and beautiful.
By some illusion of the moonlight, her face and figure, covered with
soft white wrappings for a journey, looked as he remembered to have seen
her the first night they had met in the Boston train. The picture was
completed by the traveling bag and rug that lay on the seat before her.
Another terrible foreboding seized him; his brain reeled. Was he going
mad?

"Joan!" he stammered. "You? What is the meaning of this?"

Ezekiel whom but for his dazed condition he might have seen
violently contorting his features in Joan's face, presumably in equal
astonishment--broke into a series of discordant chuckles.

"Wa'al, ef that ain't Deacon Salisbury's darter all over. Ha! Here are
ye two men folks makin' no end o' fuss to save that Mexican gal
with pistols and ambushes and plots and counterplots, and yer's Joan
Salisbury shows ye the way ha'ow to do it. And so, ma'am, you succeeded
in fixin' it up with Dona Rosita to take her place and just sell them
robbers cheap! Wa'al, ma'am, yer sold this yer party, too--for"--he
advanced his face close to hers--"I never let on a word, though I knew
it, and although they nearly knocked me off my hoss in their fuss and
fury. Ha! ha! They wanted to know what I was doin' here, he-he! Tell
'em, Joan, tell 'em."

Demorest gazed from one to another with a troubled face, yet one on
which a faint relief was breaking.

"What does he mean, Joan? Speak," he said, almost imploringly.

Joan, whose color was slightly returning, drew herself up with her old
cold Puritan precision.

"After the scene you made this morning, Richard, when you chose to
accuse your wife of unfaithfulness to her friend, her guest, and even
your reputation, I resolved to go myself with Dona Rosita to Los Osos
and explain the matter to her father. Some rumor of the ridiculous farce
I have just witnessed reached us through Ezekiel, and frightened the
poor girl so that she declined--and properly, too to face the hoax which
you and some nameless impersonator of a disgraced fugitive have gotten
up for purposes of your own! I wish you joy of your work! If the play is
over now, I presume I may be allowed to proceed on my journey?"

"Not yet," said Demorest slowly, with a face over which the chasing
doubts had at last settled in a grayish pallor. "Believe what you like,
misunderstand me if you will, laugh at the danger you perhaps comprehend