"Oh, I know I show it, Mr. Brown," she exclaimed, "but I can't help it. I've been half crazy all night long. I slept only a few minutes at a time, and even in my sleep my fears clung to me. It is my brothers. I have worried over them before, but never like this. From what I heard yesterday the spree they are on is the worst they ever had. They were with their vilest associates, moonshiners and gamblers, over at Carlin, drinking harder than ever before." Here Zilla came to the front door. Catching her mistress's eye, she cried out, excitedly: "Young miss, I see er hoss en' buggy 'way down de road. It got two mens in it. Looks ter me like de boys. Dey is whippin' de hoss powerful en' ercomin' fast." Ascending the veranda steps, Mary looked down the main road toward Carlin. "Yes, it is my brothers," she said, frowning. "Why they are hurrying so I can't make out. The horse looks as if it is about to drop." She said no more, but hastened to the front gate, where she stood, her tense hands on the latch, waiting for the vehicle to arrive. In a moment a panting, foaming bay horse was reined in at the gate and the two young men sprang down from a ramshackle buggy. "Where is father?" Kenneth, the older, a tall, dark young man, asked, hurriedly. "He is in the library, I think," his sister answered, "Kensy, what is the matter?" "Oh, don't ask me!" he cried, impatiently, a wild look in his eyes. "Keep the horse there ready, Martin. But never mind. What's the use? It is all in. We'll have to leave the main road, anyway. We must skip for the mountains." "Oh, brother, brother Kensy, what is it?" Mary cried, in sheer terror, as she clutched his arm. Drawing it from her impatiently, even roughly, he cried out to Zilla: "Call father! Hurry! No, I'll find him." "Oh, Martin, Martin, what is it?" and Mary turned to her younger brother, who was short, rather frail-looking, and had blue eyes and reddish hair. "Nothing, nothing," he said, his glance following Kenneth into the house. "Don't ask me, sis. It is all right." "But I know something has gone wrong!" Mary cried. "You and Kensy look it; you can't hide it. What is it?" He shrugged his shoulders, lifted his brows, and then said, reluctantly: "Well, we got in a little scrape, that's all, and had to make a break to get away. The sheriff and a deputy are after us." "After you! after you!" Mary gasped. "What have you done?" Martin hesitated sullenly, his eyes on the grass. "Tell yo' sister de trufe, boy," Aunt Zilla suddenly broke in. "Be ershamed er yo'se'f, keepin' 'er awake all night wid worry. Tell 'er what's de matter. Don't yer see she's half 'stracted over yo-all's doin's?"