was also busy upon concerns that had to do with this far-off corner of the country. The Secret Service Bureau, tracing the movements and contemplating the mystery of the appearance and disappearance of a dangerous criminal, had focused its eye upon this great Northwest, because of certain facts which had this day come to its knowledge.
But Henry, unaware of some of these convergences and unmindful of others, took his way wretchedly up the wide walk to Humboldt House with the chill of John Boland's bitter glance in his marrow and the slight consolation of a very sickly hope within his breast.
As for Billie, that haughty reserve with which she had parted from her lover had presently given place to anguished misgivings and she had spent a restless night. In her morning room, with wide windows looking to the inlet and the sea, but with the bright sun letting no cheer into her heart, Henry found her. She was wearing a weeping-willow air and a frock in some shade so neutral that it declined entirely to announce itself, merely blending with the pathos of a disconsolate yet beautiful figure which drooped in a grass-woven chair, banked round with cretonne cushions. But at sight of her lover Billie sprang up with a cry of eagerness and suddenly inspired hope.
"Henry! Oh, Henry!" she rejoiced; then observing the lined gravity of his expression and the mournful, pleading light of his great gray eyes, hope died, and her own eyes filled with tears. She flung out her hands to him hoarsely and pleaded: "Henry . . . Henry . . . You must not do this mad thing. You must not!"
The lover, touched even as he had not been before,
