e would have gone.

While he rode, troubled by vague apprehensions, which now and then gave
place to exultation that set his heart throbbing, Hetty sat with Miss
Schuyler in her room at Cedar Range. An occasional murmur of voices
reached them faintly from the big hall below where Torrance and some of
his neighbours sat with the Sheriff over their cigars and wine, and the
girls knew that a few of the most daring horsemen among the cow-boys had
their horses saddled ready. Hetty lay in a low chair with a book she was
not reading on her knee, and Miss Schuyler, glancing at her now and then
over the embroidery she paid almost as little attention to, noticed the
weariness in her face and the anxiety in her eyes. She laid down her
needle when Torrance's voice came up from below.

"What can they be plotting, Hetty?" she said. "Horses ready, that most
unpleasant Sheriff smiling cunningly as he did when I passed him talking
to Clavering, and the sense of expectancy. It's there. One could hear it
in their voices, even if one had not seen their faces, and when I met your
father at the head of the stairs he almost frightened me. Of course, he
was not theatrical--he never is--but I know that set of his lips and look
in his eyes, and have more than a fancy it means trouble for somebody. I
suppose he has not told you anything--in fact, he seems to have kept
curiously aloof from both of us lately."

Hetty turned towards her with a little spot of colour in her cheek and
apprehension in her eyes.

"So you have noticed it, too!" she said very slowly. "Of course, he has
been busy and often away, while I know how anxious he must be; but when he
is at home he scarcely speaks to me--and then, there is something in his
voice that hurts me. I'm 'most afraid he has found out that I have been
talking to Larry."

Miss Schuyler smiled. "Well," she said, "that--alone--would not be such a
very serious offence."

The crimson showed plainer in Hetty's cheek and there was a faint ring in
her voice. "Flo," she said, "don't make me angry--I can't bear it
to-night. Something is going to happen--I can feel it is--and you don't
know my father even yet. He is so horribly quiet, and I'm afraid of as
well as sorry for him. It is a long while ago, but he looked just as he
does now--only not quite so grim--during my mother's last illness. Oh, I
know there is something worrying him, and he will not tell me--though he
was always kind before, even when he was a