So preoccupied had Rathburn been hitherto in the significant and absorbing events of the evening that his mind had had little tendency to even unconscious processes of deduction which did not immediately pertain to the imminence of his danger and the security of his escape. It had not as yet occurred to him to speculate upon the influences which had moved Marcella to so unprecedented a course as to lure away the secret from one of the lynchers, and come with it to the rescue of a stranger and the ostracized Baintree. Mrs. Strobe’s logic, all unwitting though she was to whom she applied it, had kindled an idea in his brain that glowed and burned, and presently leaped like wild-fire from conjecture to conclusion, carrying all before it in its irresistible exhilaration. He was not a stranger to Marcella. She had not forgotten him, evidently. Perchance it was some nearer, more coercive, more personal interest that had nerved her; how else, indeed, could it be? He had not hitherto thought of her save that her beauty had impressed him as strangely incongruous with the poverty of her surroundings,—incompetent even to afford the foil to the jewel, and of jarring and discordant effect; and earlier to-night his heart had only been stirred toward her with genuine gratitude. It was moved now with the sweet vanity of believing himself beloved. He perhaps would have esteemed his state of mind coxcombical in another man, but poor human nature is provided with a keen vision for the defects of others, and a purblind perception of those same traits closer at home. He felt a strong zest, a renewing interest, in reviewing the circumstances, when Mrs. Strobe, drawing from her pocket a corn-cob pipe, proceeded to crumble into its bowl a leaf of tobacco, asking the while, “An’ whar did this n’angel find ye?” Once more he glanced at Marcella, who sat quite still, quite grave, listening sedately. “She started up the mountain, thinking she would go to Baintree’s people, and that may be they would know where he was; but she heard the picks as we were digging in a gorge, and so she found us.” Mrs. Strobe seemed to revolve this statement when it was finished, nodded her head several times, and emitted two or three deliberate puffs of smoke. “She did, did she?” she observed, in default of more acrid comment, but bent upon ridicule. “Then she told us all she knew”— “Mighty easy done, I’ll bet,” interpolated the little dame. —“Or had heard about the affair, and begged us not to tell who told us”— “Tuk a power o’ pains ter keep herself safe from the lynchers, I’ll be bound”— “That she didn’t!” cried the young fellow. “That’s all she said about it, and left the rest to our discretion.” “Waal, _that_ war a pore dependence, I will gin up,” said Mrs. Strobe, her pipe in her hand, her puckered lips, with a laugh well hid in their corrugations, ostensibly grave.