The magazine lay open in Katherine's lap. She rested an elbow on the window-sill and sat for a long time looking out across the valley. Not two weeks before this day she had stood on the veranda with Harvey, looking at the same picture through the haze of twilight. Then it had seemed like summer; now it was unmistakably autumn. Then the leaves were only beginning to yield to the touch of the waning year; now they were aflame and dropping--as she looked a whirl of them danced across the sloping lawn, the stragglers settling in the grass already marked by little dabs of red and russet brown. Farther off, in the valley, were corn-fields, now squares of yellow and bronze and gold. It was a glowing picture, but to Katherine it meant only that summer was dead, and she viewed it with vague regret. The afternoon wore on, but Katherine took no account of it. At a little after four, when Jim Weeks drove up and entered the building, she was startled into looking at her watch. She heard the telephone bell ring, and realized that he was talking. Then he paced up and down the hall. She wanted to go out there and ask him about Harvey, whether he was found, or whether--she shuddered a little at the thought of injury--but a feeling of helplessness possessed her. She realized that the time was slipping rapidly away. Jim Weeks might go, and she would have learned nothing, would have done nothing. But she had not come altogether in vain. She recalled with half-defiant pride that Jim had used her horses. “You are Miss Porter?” Katherine started, and turned with a slow blush. Weeks stood gravely looking at her. “I understand that I have to thank you,” he continued. “They were your horses, I believe. I hope I have not inconvenienced you by keeping you here. But it was an emergency.” “Has Mr. West been found?” Katherine struggled to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “No.” Weeks sat down. “It seems impossible to get any word. I've roused things pretty effectively though, I think. There's a reward up. The sheriffs of both counties are at work, and the farmers are all stirred up. There's nothing to do but wait. If he's found, and by any chance is hurt, they're to bring him here.” “Wouldn't it be a good plan to have a doctor here, in case--” “I don't think it is necessary. Of course the probability is that he is locked up somewhere and is being held for a day or so. If he is knocked out, it was not done intentionally. They wouldn't dare.”