The girl stole quietly into the toll-house after her lover had ridden away toward the misty hills. She found her mother still sleeping soundly in her chair, quite oblivious of surroundings, and little dreaming that the secret the Squire had urged her to keep so securely had reached a third pair of ears already in its swift journeyings. Catching up her sewing again, which she had quickly dropped on the floor in her eagerness to see the belated rider, Sally began to sew away industriously to make up for lost time, while her thoughts flew a good deal faster than her needle. Her surcharged mind was now happily relieved of a portion of its burden of fears. There was no longer any danger threatening her sweetheart, so far as the present intended raid was concerned, and possibly this itself would fail of fruition. Soon after ten o'clock the sheriff and a posse of armed men appeared. "You keep late hours, Miss Sally," he said when she and her mother came out to receive them. "I expected to find you both asleep." "Not when we are expecting company," the girl answered with a laugh that was somewhat forced; "that wouldn't be good manners, you know." "It's no use to go to bed," insisted Mrs. Brown. "I couldn't sleep a wink, not if my life depended on it, that I couldn't." Sally smiled faintly, thinking of the recent long nap her mother had taken, and of the warning that had been given, quite unknown to the sleeper, thanks to this period of oblivion. "I do hope none of you will get hurt!" cried the girl in deep concern. "It seems dreadful to think that perhaps before morning a very battle may be fought right around this quiet spot." "Don't be alarmed," the sheriff insisted. "I look for little trouble or bloodshed either." "No more do I," thought the pretty toll-taker, with a secret satisfaction she admirably concealed. "I expect to take the rascals so completely by surprise they will have a chance to make but little resistance," the officer continued reassuringly, for the girl's apparent fear appealed to him. "Perhaps we may be able to capture the whole band without loss of a single man." A feeling almost bordering on resignation had gradually supplanted the disturbed condition of Mrs. Brown's mind since her daughter's reassuring confession that the Squire had placed a shelter at their disposal, in case the raiders deprived them of the one they now had. She began to feel that the threatened calamity might, after all, take on the characteristics of a disguised blessing, since it would help to bring to a climax a state of affairs she had long striven, though unsuccessfully, to mold to her purpose, and that through the raiders the Squire might also manage to get him a wife, which, up to the present moment at least had proven a most elusive quantity.