It is saying much for Miss Forsyth that she did not look as disconcerted as she felt. She did, however, show a rather catty look in her eyes, and her voice was tinged faintly with malice. "There are _other_ crimes--beside--_murder_," she reminded. "I won't tell _what_ it was--but--but _Will_ found it necessary to _leave in the night_! He did not even come to tell _me_ goodbye, and I have--but now we have met by _chance_, and I could _explain_--and so," she smiled tremulously at the schoolma'am, "I _know_ you can _understand_--and you will not _mention_ to _anyone_ what I have told you. I'm too _impulsive_--and I felt _drawn_ to you, somehow. I--I would _die_ if I thought any _harm_ could come to Will because of my _confiding_ in you. A woman," she added pensively, "has so _much_ to bear--and this has been very _hard_--because it was not a thing I could _talk over_--not even with my own _mother_!" Miss Forsyth had the knack of saying very little that was definite, and implying a great deal. This method saved her the unpleasantness of retraction, and had quite as deep an effect is if she came out plainly. She smiled confidingly down at the schoolma'am and went off to waltz with Bert Rogers, apparently quite satisfied with what she had accomplished. Miss Satterly sat very still, scarce thinking consciously. She stared at Weary and tried to imagine him a fugitive from his native town, and in spite of herself wondered what it was he had done. It must be something very bad, and she shrank from the thought. Then Cal Emmett came up to ask her for a dance, and she went with him thankfully and tried to forget the things she had heard. Weary, after dancing with every woman but the one he wanted, and finding himself beside Myrtle Forsyth with a frequency that puzzled him, felt an unutterable disgust for the whole thing. After a waltz quadrille, during which he seemed to get her out of his arms only to find her swinging into them again, and smiling up at him in a way he knew of old, he made desperately for the door; snatched up the first gray hat he came to--which happened to belong to Chip--and went out into the dewy darkness. It was half an hour before he could draw the hostler of the Dry Lake stable away from a crap game, and it was another half hour before he succeeded in overcoming Glory's disinclination for a gallop over the prairie alone. But it was two hours before Miss Forsythe gave over watching furtively the door, and it was daylight before Chip Emmett found a gray hat under the water bench--a hat which he finally recognized as Weary's and so appropriated to his own use. PART FOUR Weary clattered up to the school-house door to find it erupting divers specimens of young America--by adoption, some of them. He greeted each one cheerfully by name and waited upon his horse in the shade.