"We can see the road better from the upstairs windows--come!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet. She hastily closed the outer door into the court-yard, which still stood open, and ran upstairs, followed by Desmond. From the highest window of the house--a sort of landing or look-out at the top of the stairs--they had a view of the windings of the white road between wood and hillside. The night had fallen like a dark mantle over the land; but the sky was clear; the moon had risen; and in the dusk they could just distinguish the pale, dim line of the road between the shadows of the trees--could even discern upon it, though some distance off as yet, what looked at first like a dark, blurred, swift moving spot, then resolved itself into a group of mounted men riding straight for the Saucel Ranch. "There they are," said Oliver Desmond in a low voice; but he was suddenly and strangely calm now the danger was at his door. "They're coming here. There's a handy tree I see over yonder, just outside your gates," he added, with the frequent tendency of men who are used to carry their lives in their hands to "jest upon the axe which kills them." Barbara clasped and wrung her hands. "Too late to fly!" she said. "Before we could get Sultan out of the stable and saddle him they'll be here! There's no time for escape. You must _hide_!" "If they've got dogs, I'm a dead man," he rejoined, staring at the fast nearing horsemen; "and I shall be dangling from that tree before an hour has passed!" Barbara flew to the nearest door and opened it, then the next, and the next, glancing in wild and eager haste into each room to see in which any hiding-place might be found--although she knew too well the simple arrangements of the ranch offered no facilities for concealment. No secret chambers, no sliding panels, no dark recesses nor trap-doors in this plain wooden "frame" house. The outhouses? No, they would probably be the first places searched; the natural idea of the pursuers would be that he might have sought refuge there unknown to the inmates of the house. There were no cellars, no possible safe hiding-places on the lower floor; on the upper floor there were but three rooms--Mr. and Mrs. Thorne's room, Barbara's room, and the "guest-room." All were plainly furnished with bare necessaries: no "old oak chests," no tapestries nor hanging draperies, no curtained recesses, no place to hide a good-sized dog, much less a full-grown man. Barbara's was the only one of the bedrooms that could boast of a cupboard--a long, narrow cupboard which she used as a wardrobe, and kept her dresses there hung on pegs. This was the only place.