“No, ma'am. Bunny had his reasons for going. They looked good to him and nothing was holding him, so he just went. I seen him when he went. It looked like it come over him all at once that he had ought to go,” explained Mr. Brown considerately and at length. “I am so glad! I was afraid that perhaps they had met.” “Where's Johnny gone?” inquired Brown. “We think to Alvarado.” Mollie had appeared in the dining-room doorway and was listening, but Brown's back was turned toward her. “What's to hinder my going there after him?” asked Brown. “I can produce an argument he'll listen to.” Unconsciously his hand rested on Mr. Bunny's gun. “It's awful kind of you to suggest it, but perhaps you shouldn't go; it may make trouble for you,” said Miss Mollie. It was the habit of a lifetime with her to think of others. “You're a good kind man!” cried Mollie fervently through her tears, advancing. “You tell him that I just hate and despise that Bunny.... I didn't mean anything I said.... I'm sorry—sorry!” She seized one of his hands in both of hers. “Oh, he must come back!—tell him to come back, Mr. Brown——” “I'm aimin' to tell him just that,—and he'll come back all right,” Brown assured her. “Do you think he will?—do you... do you?” “I was never surer of anything in my life.” Mollie relinquished his hand, and throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him. An instant later and she had buried her face on his shoulder and was sobbing aloud. Mr. Brown's unhandsome face flushed scarlet. Never in all his varied experience had he known anything like this. Then his face grew white, and he shook as he had never shaken in the presence of danger, violence, or the risk of sudden death. Johnny Severance had quitted the Red Bird and turned his face in the direction of Alvarado. Two years of perfect happiness had vanished in the cataclysm that had overwhelmed him and Mollie. A sudden mist swam before his eyes. Well, she hadn't treated him right, but he hoped she would find peace,—he was man enough to wish no less. He must shape his own future out of the wreck she had made; though this didn't matter greatly, since he was sure life held nothing for him,—indeed, he rather gloated in the thought of an existence, bleak, purposeless and incomparably lonely,—and again the mist seemed to burn his very eyeballs, while it sent the gray valley and the line of purple peaks deep into the distance. He kept the trail for Alvarado all that day and at nightfall went into camp. Necessity now drove him to the lunch he had brought away from the Red Bird. He choked over each mouthful, for Mollie's small deft hands had been busy here. He reflected bitterly that never again was this to be. “It'll be up to some chuck-house cook to fill my dinner pail!” he murmured sadly. With the final mouthful he felt that he had destroyed the last link that bound him to the past.