THE SOD ON THE PANE
heavy wheels drowned his voice and the clouds of dust hid him from view.
He stuffed Esmeralda Charley's message in his pocket, deciding to start in time to catch the stage the next morning, then turned back to the house. He had some long hours to himself that day, and filled them only with his own impatience, and the setting alight of his heaps of pine-needles in the clearing. After lunch Blanche came, saying she hadn't a minute; but Mrs. Rader was better. She always had these "spells"—Blanche put it in the old country fashion—once or twice in a summer.
"Why, that's good," Carron said absently, and hastily explained that what he had meant was, it was good that she was better. What he had thought in fact had been, that happily, for the day at least, Ferrier could not get hold of her.
"You'll have to give me a minute," he said, "and a little more. I have something to say to you," and hailed her out.
On the side of the clearing, opposite the house, and in plain sight of it, they sat down beneath the fringe of trees. Below them flicked pointed flames, or pale blue threads rose straight in the still air, making it more misty. The smoke of the little fires was in their nostrils, the odor of the sacrifice to
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