“You need n't tell me, Lem,” Henrietta said. “No more, at any rate. You have told me all about it.” She turned to Freeman. “What you are hunting is not here,” she said, “and you are only making yourself ridiculous. Go back to your room. When I am ready I will give you what you are hunting, but first, Freeman, you will have to tell Miss Susan who took her money.” Freeman looked at his wife with hatred in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it and went out and into his own room. The moment her door was dosed, Henrietta took Miss Susan's money from her waist and hid it carefully, where she felt sure it would be safe. Poor Lem was already sound asleep and Henrietta removed her shoes and a few of her outer garments, wrapped herself in her bathrobe, and in a minute she too was asleep. CHAPTER XXI Henrietta's first act on awakening was to look for Lem and, as she might have expected, the boy was gone. Her next was to look at her watch. She felt she must have slept until midday, so different was her physical and mental condition than when she had thrown herself on the bed. For some quite unaccountable reason she felt tremendously strong and buoyant. For a few moments she could not grasp why she felt so, and then she suddenly realized that her cheer of mind was due to the fact that Freeman, for the only time in years, was not a threatening menace, but absolutely under her control. Until she chose to permit him to be clad, he was her prisoner, and as her prisoner, subject to her orders. When she had drawn on her kimona and tiptoed out of her room on her way to the bath, she glanced at Freeman's closed door and smiled. No need to worry about Freeman for an hour or two. Half an hour later, fully garbed, she stepped from her room again, and this time she tapped on Freeman's door, gently at first and then more vigorously. There was no response. Henrietta opened the door and looked into the room. It was empty; Freeman was gone. In the hall, in the corner nearest Henrietta's door, stood a wood box, receptacle for the wood used in the winter stoves, and above this the plaster and lath had been broken. It was in the hole in the wall thus made that Henrietta had thrust Freeman's trousers, crowding them down out of sight. They were still there, and as if in answer to another query that came into Henrietta's mind at the moment, she heard Gay's voice, brisk and happy, speaking to Lorna below. If Freeman had fled, he had not persuaded Gay to fly with him. Probably he had fled with such covering as he could improvise, hoping to arouse one of his boon companions and beg what was necessary, Henrietta thought. When she reached the hall below she found Gay, Lorna, and Johnnie Alberson there, laughing over some item in the morning _Eagle_. “Lem has gone,” she said. “Good for Lem,” said Johnnie, and he handed her the paper, pointing to a headline.