Then, I believe, she strove to get Downs to steal them, and gave him the money with which to desert and bring them to her. He couldn't get into the iron box; couldn't lug it out, and somehow, probably, set fire to the place, scratching matches in there. Perhaps she even persuaded him to do that as a last resort. He knew I could get out safely. At all events, he was scared out of his wits and deserted with what he had. It was in trying to make his way eastward by the Wingate road that there came the last of poor Ups and Downs." And so the story of this baleful influence over a weak, half-drugged girl, her mistress, became known to Plume and gradually to others. It was easy for Elise to make her believe that, in spite of the word of a gentleman, her impulsive love letters were still held by Blakely because he had never forgiven her. It was Elise, indeed, who had roused her jealousy and had done her best to break that engagement with Blakely and to lead to the match with the handsome and devoted major. Intrigue and lying were as the breath of the woman's nostrils. She lived in them. But Sandy was never to see her again. "Woman-Walk-in-the-Night" was "Woman-Walk-no-More." And now the friendless creature stood charged with more crimes than would fill the meager space of a Territorial jail, and yet the one originally laid at her door, though never publicly announced, was now omitted entirely--that of assault with deadly weapon, possibly with intent to kill. Even Mother Shaughnessy and Norah were silenced, and Pat Mullins put to confusion. Even the latest punctured patient at the hospital, Private Todd, had to serve as evidence in behalf of Elise, for Graham, post surgeon, had calmly declared that the same weapon that so nearly killed Pat Mullins had as nearly and neatly done the deed for Todd--the keen Apache knife of Princess Natzie. "The heathen child was making her usual night visit to her white lover," said Wren grimly, having in mind the womanly shape he had seen that starlit morning at Blakely's rear door. "You're right in one guess, R-robert Wren," was the prompt answer of his friend and fellow Scot, who glared at Janet rather than his convalescent as he spoke. "And ye're wrang in twanty. She _was_ tryin', and didn't know the way. She _was_ tryin', for she had his watch and pocketbook. You're wrang if ye think she was ever there before or after. The slut you saw cryin' at his back door was that quean Elise, an' ye well know there was no love lost between them. Go say yer prayers, man, for every wicked thought ye've had of him--or of that poor child. Between them they saved your Angela!" CHAPTER XXVII THE PARTING BY THE WATERS