She spoke with a quiet intensity that amazed Lowell. "Not come to see you any more! Why such an extreme sentence?" "Because there is an evil spell on the Greek Letter Ranch. Everybody who comes there is certain to be followed by trouble--deep trouble." The girl's agitation increased. There was terror in her face. "Look here!" began Lowell. "This thing is beyond all promises of silence. I--" "Don't ask what I mean!" said the girl. "You might find it awkward. You say you are in love with me?" "I repeat it a thousand times." "Well, you are the kind of man who will choose honor every time. I realize that much. Suppose you found that your love for me was bringing you in direct conflict with your duty?" "I know that such a thing is impossible," broke in Lowell. Helen smiled, bitterly. "It is so far from being impossible that I am asking you to forget what you have said, and to forget me as well. There is so much of evil on the Greek Letter Ranch that the very soil there is steeped in it. I am going away, but I know its spell will follow me." "You are going?" queried Lowell. "When?" "When these men now charged with the murder are acquitted. They will be acquitted, will they not?" The eager note in her question caught Lowell by surprise. "No man can tell," he replied. "It's all as inscrutable as that mountain wall over there." Helen shaded her eyes with her gauntleted hand as she looked in the direction indicated by Lowell. Black clouds were pouring in masses over the mountain-range. The sunshine was being blotted out, as if by some giant hand. The storm-clouds swept toward them as they turned the horses and started back along the ridge. A huge shadow, which Helen shudderingly likened to the sprawling figure of Talpers in the lamplight, raced toward them over the plains. "There isn't a storm in all that blackness," Lowell assured her. "It's all shadow and no substance. Perhaps your fears will turn out that way." The girl regarded him gravely. "I've tried to hope as much, but it's no use, especially when you've felt the first actual buffetings of the storm." The approaching cloud shadow seemed startlingly solid. The girl urged her horse into a gallop, and Lowell rode silently at her side. The shadow overtook them. Angry winds seemed to clutch at them from various angles, but no rain came from the cloud mass overhead. When they rode into the ranch yard, the sun was shining again. They dismounted near the barn, and Wong took the white horse. Lowell and the girl walked through the yard to the front gate, the agent leading his horse. As they passed near the porch there came through the open door that same chilling, sarcastic voice which stirred all the ire in Lowell's nature. "Helen," the voice said, "that careless individual, Wong, must be reprimanded. He has mislaid one of my choicest volumes. Perhaps it would be better for you to attend to replacing the books on the shelves after this."