The morrow was Sunday. Janice went her usual calm way. People seemed rather nicer to her than usual, but their attitude did not arouse her suspicions in the least. At church there seemed to be more groups than usual both before and after service who whispered together. Mr. Middler, the pastor, who loved Janice as he might his own daughter, added a warmer pressure to his handclasp. Mrs. Middler kissed her several times, and Janice thought with some surprise that the affectionate woman had been crying. Elder Concannon, that stern and bewhiskered patriarch who had once looked upon Janice Day and her ideas as the very leaven of unrighteousness in the community, strode over to the girl and rested his hands upon her shoulders to make her look up at him. "Ha!" he said. "Just as brave as ever, are you? You're not fearing the future, my girl?" "How can I when the past has been so lovely?" she asked him soberly. "Ha!" and he wagged his head. "So _that's_ the way the past has seemed to you, eh?" He said no more; but Janice wondered what the matter was with Elder Concannon. He was so seldom demonstrative. CHAPTER VI THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS Nelson Haley was not at church that Sunday. He was seen to ride away with Walky Dexter early in the morning and they took the lower Middletown road. When they returned late in the afternoon they assured each other that they had accomplished much. They had prepared the way for Janice when she should go to the seminary on Monday--and more. It seemed to Janice that week as though the girls had never before been so nice to her. One of the instructors kept her in the office it was true when she arrived on Monday, over a really trivial matter, while the principal was addressing the student body; but the subject of the principal's address did not interest Janice, she learned later, she being only a day pupil. In fact she was merely taking a postgraduate course in certain studies. Nor did she imagine that the editor of the Middletown _Courier_ went to his office that Monday morning and "killed" a two-column news feature he had planned for the front page, as well as an editorial and a certain "intimate note" of neighborhood gossip under the heading of "Polktown Activities." Nelson Haley was not omnipotent. He could not reach everybody or foretell all combinations of events that might reveal to Janice her father's peril. But he had done his best. _The Weekly Courier_ would not mention Mexican matters in its Thursday's issue. Meanwhile Nelson, with Uncle Jason and Mr. Middler, the pastor of the Polktown Union Church, as a self-appointed committee, endeavored to get the truth from the Border regarding the uprising in the Companos District and particularly the facts of the situation at the Alderdice Mine.