When they next stood side by side the early daylight was creeping across the little railroad town, and Breckenridge, whose young face was white, shivered with more than the bitter cold. He never wished to recall it, but the details of that scene would return to him--the square frame houses under the driving snow-cloud, the white waste they rose from, the grim, silent horsemen with the rifles across their saddles, and the intent faces beyond them in the close-packed street. He saw the prisoner standing rigidly erect in a wagon drawn up beside a towering telegraph-pole, and heard a voice reading hoarsely. A man raised his hand, somebody lashed the horses, the wagon lurched away, a dusky object cut against the sky, and Breckenridge turned his eyes away. A sound that might have been a groan or murmur broke from the crowd and the momentary silence that followed it was rent by the crackle of riflery. After that, Breckenridge only recollected riding across the prairie amidst a group of silent men, and feeling very cold. In the meanwhile the citizens were gazing at a board nailed to the telegraph-pole: "For murder and robbery. Take warning! Anyone offending in the same way will be treated similarly!" XI LARRY'S ACQUITTAL A warm wind from the Pacific, which had swept down through the Rockies' passes, had mitigated the Arctic cold, and the snow lay no more than thinly sprinkled upon the prairie. Hetty Torrance and Miss Schuyler were riding up through the birch bluff from the bridge of the Cedar. It was dim among the trees, for dusk was closing in, the trail was rough and steep, and Hetty drew bridle at a turn of it. "I quite fancied we would have been home before it was dark, and my father would be just savage if he knew we were out alone," she said. "Of course, he wouldn't have let us go if he had been at Cedar." Flora Schuyler looked about her with a shiver. The wind that shook the birches had grown perceptibly colder: the gloom beneath them deepened rapidly, and there was a doleful wailing amidst the swinging boughs. Beyond the bluff the white wilderness, sinking into dimness now, ran back, waste and empty, to the horizon. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, and the loneliness of the prairie is most impressive when night is closing down. "Then one could have wished he had been at home," she said. Perhaps Hetty did not hear her plainly, for the branches thrashed above them just then. "Oh, that's quite right. Folks are not apt to worry much over the things they don't know about," she said. "It was not your father I was sorry for," Flora Schuyler said sharply. "The sod is too hard for fast riding, and it will be 'most an hour yet before we get home. I wish we were not alone, Hetty." Hetty sighed. "It was so convenient once!" she said. "Whenever I wanted to ride out I had only to send for Larry. It's quite different now." "I have no doubt Mr. Clavering would have come," said Miss Schuyler.