It was a lucky star that guided Margaret De Jarnette to Missouri, where are warm hearts and hospitable homes. She found there the two things that she was in desperate need of--a refuge and a friend. Mrs. Pennybacker lived on a farm with her orphaned granddaughter, Bess, who was at that time at Synodical College in Fulton. She welcomed Margaret with all the warmth of a great heart and the accumulated love of two generations. And here for four years and a half the mother and child found a shelter from the storm--a covert so secure that Richard De Jarnette with all his efforts had never been able to ferret it out. Margaret had taken every precaution to lose her identity. The name of De Jarnette was of course discarded, and she would not even risk Varnum. She was known in the neighborhood as Mrs. Osborne, a friend of Mrs. Pennybacker's from the East, who had recently been bereaved and had come to her for a quiet home. It was not an inquisitive locality, and a word from Mrs. Pennybacker as to the depth of the widowed lady's grief and her reluctance to have it referred to effectually sealed the lips of the kindly folk among whom her lot was cast. Bess, when she came home for the vacation, was told as much as her grandmother thought best to tell, and no more. "We'll take her in on probation, and after a while when she has been proved, into full communion. I am that much of a Methodist, anyway," Mrs. Pennybacker said. It is needless to say that long before this Bess was a sister in full fellowship. Margaret was not even willing to let her safety rest upon a change of name. In her first wild fear that she might be tracked she had wanted it given out in the neighborhood that the child was a girl, but upon this Mrs. Pennybacker set her foot down hard. It was a comparatively easy thing, she admitted, to change the sex of a baby, and it did seem under the circumstances that it would be a most innocent and inoffensive lie. But it was the nature of some lies that having been once entered into they must be persevered in to the bitter end. Margaret would find that having become entangled in this one the sex complications would grow in intricacy as the years went by. So that was given up. The girl had written to Judge Kirtley a few weeks after reaching Missouri, telling him of her new home and her plans, and thereafter Mrs. Pennybacker received New York drafts at regular intervals. He had also written Margaret at once, informing her of Mr. De Jarnette's movements so far as they could be ascertained. "He is very close-mouthed," he wrote, "but determined. I have reason to believe that he is keeping up a still hunt all the time. By the way, of course you must know that you have laid yourself liable to action against you on a charge of kidnapping. I am hoping that Mr. De Jarnette's feeling against you may wear itself out in time. But, in the meantime, take every precaution."