The girl found herself wondering that her lover's anger had not centered on herself rather than the Squire. She was the one on whom the younger man should have avenged himself. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing, after all, that she had not followed him further into the night. He might have been tempted, in his ungovernable rage, to wreak his vengeance on her as well as on his hated kinsman. A strange, unusual timidity suddenly took possession of her--a feeling that was near akin, to dread of the younger man, irresponsible in his jealous rage, though scarcely a fear of the man himself, so much as of the demon of jealousy she had aroused in him. Beset with this new sensation, she peered cautiously into the night, as though one might be lurking in hiding near by, ready to spring forth upon her, then realizing that nothing but darkness lay around her, she abruptly turned her steps toward the toll-house. Alas! the bitter disappointment of life. Thus had come to naught all the efforts in Milton Derr's behalf, her own sacrifice a useless thing, since, instead of averting the dangers that threatened him, she had unwittingly been the cause of involving him in yet greater perils. Even though his threats against the Squire were but idle ones--blasted buds of evil without promise of fruition, as she believed them to be, still, if Milt persisted in tarrying longer in the locality, he was not only putting his own life in jeopardy, but would also bring on Steve Judson swift retribution as well. She had tried to impress these facts on Milt's mind before he had gone away. Why had he not remained away as she had entreated him to do, on parting? Then she remembered that he would not have returned--that he would probably have known nothing of her marriage until it was too late, if he had not read an announcement of it in the papers. Her mother was really at the bottom of it all, she was chiefly to blame for Milt's return; for many things, in fact, now bearing the bitter fruit of sorrow. Mrs. Brown had caused the notice of the marriage to be put in the paper without her daughter's knowledge or consent. Sally had begged her mother to say as little about the wedding as possible, and if that obdurate person had only heeded the request, all this present trouble might easily have been avoided. Beset with anxious doubts, intangible fears, disquieting thoughts, feeling the while most bitterly toward her mother for the officious part she had persistently played in all this unhappy affair, Sally retraced her steps slowly to the toll-house. Poor girl! Truly her marriage eve was not a propitious one. The first objects on which the girl's eyes rested the next morning, when she awoke after a troubled sleep, were the simple wedding garments spread out carefully on some chairs near her bed, and as she lay and looked at them in bitterness of heart and spirit, she heard her mother astir in the kitchen preparing breakfast.