"I--I thought"--stammered Mrs. Carder, "I thought she wanted to look pretty. I--I thought you were goin' to marry her. She never told me anything. Gone away?" Some curiosity struggled through the old woman's paralyzing fear. "How could she go away? She hadn't any hat on." She spoke tremulously. "Come up to her room," said Rufus sternly. He flung his gun into a corner and strode toward the stairs, the shaky old woman following him. Up in Geraldine's chamber he stood still for a moment scowling and viewing its neatness, then strode to the closet and opened the door. Her shabby suit was hanging there, and the pale-green challie gown she had worn in his office. He grasped its soft folds in crushing fingers. The gingham dress in which she worked every morning was also hanging on its hook. Her hat was on the shelf. That was all. Her few toilet articles were neatly arranged on the shabby old bureau. He opened its drawers and tossed their meager contents ruthlessly, searching for some letter or scrap of paper to throw light on her exit. He went to the trunk which contained some sheets of music and a few books. These he scattered about searching, searching between their leaves. His mother, trembling before him, spoke tremulously. "Did she have any money to go away?" "No," he growled. "You can see she didn't expect to go, Rufus," said the old woman timidly. "All her things are here. Why--why don't you take the car and--and go after her?" "Because she went up in the air, that's why; and I'll kill him!" He shook his fists in impotent rage. "He'll find he didn't get away with it as neat as he thought." He stormed out of the room, and lucky it was for Pete that that threshold could tell no tales. The old woman stared after him in a new terror. Her son, the most important man in the county, had lost his mind, and all for the sake of that girl who had managed in some mysterious way to give him the slip. "Gone up in the air!" Poor Rufus. He had gone mad. She managed that night to get an interview in the woodshed with the grief-stricken Pete, and in spite of his incoherence and renewed sobs she learned what had happened. The dwarf believed that his goddess had been kidnapped. It never occurred to his dull brain to connect her disappearance with the letters he had conveyed to her. The next day Carder was amazed to have the boy seek him. Never before had Pete ventured to volunteer a word to him. He was sitting in his den gnawing his nails and revolving in his mind some scheme for Geraldine's recovery when the dwarf appeared at the door. His shock of hair stood up as usual and his eyes were swollen. "Can't we--can't we--look for her, master?" he asked beseechingly. "They may hurt her--the man that stole her. Can't you--find him, master?" Carder's scowl bent upon the humble suppliant. "I ought to have shot him the first time he came," he said savagely.