Professor Russell did not stop long to question the muzzle of a revolver, and sprang out into the night. The neighbors, too, frightened by Mark’s savagery, made short adieux and went home. Alice was nearly unconscious from her fright, and Mark bore her to a couch. “I should like to have kicked that hound into the middle of next week!” he muttered. “Heaven knows what he has done to my poor Alice.” “I hope it’s not I who have harmed Mrs. Cramer,” faltered Tibby. “No, no, child! Not you! You have done good work. I wish I had been here earlier.” Tibby lifted Mrs. Cramer’s white face in her arms and whispered softly to her. “He has gone, and will never harm nor frighten you again.” “Mark did not kill him?” she questioned. “No, only frightened him away. Mark is here.” “You will not let him come again,” she said, looking with appealing eyes into Tibby’s face. “Never!” said Tibby with finality. With a sigh of relief she sank back upon her pillow, and after a time, Tibby, believing her asleep, stole softly away. “I’ve been a brute to frighten Alice so,” Mark said as Tibby came out. “No, it was Russell that frightened her. I wish before I wakened him I had driven him out and told him not to stop going,” Tibby replied. “We would have a second edition of the Wandering Jew,” Mark responded. CHAPTER XXVI ESTHER’S DISAPPEARANCE The shock of Professor Russell’s last visit and forced departure prostrated Alice Cramer, and in the days that followed, a little life that should have brightened Mark’s home opened its eyes to shut them too quickly, and went away into the unknown from whence it came, leaving desolation and sorrow behind it. But this bereavement was swallowed up in the anxiety for the mother, who for many days seemed about to follow her child. At the same time another calamity befell the community, a tragedy that touched all hearts. This was nothing less than the sudden and unaccountable disappearance of Esther McCleary upon the night Russell had been driven from Mark’s house. Where she went or how, no one could determine. She had gone to her room at the usual hour of retiring. In the morning she was gone, leaving no word or trace of her going. Her mother refused to believe that any harm could have befallen her, and would have kept the matter secret; but the poor father at last dared to think for himself, and notified the neighbors. With their help he searched the canon and the weed-covered tracts of the prairies to find, perchance, her body, while Donald went to the nearest railway stations to learn if she had been seen to depart by any of them, but to no avail.