He seized the table-cloth and threw it over the face whose solemn, tragic calm filled him with a sick dread. Then with breathless haste he flung some clothes into a valise and made the fire burn high with the letters and papers he threw on it at intervals. The first carts of the morning had begun their rattling course through the stirred darkness when he crept out, a haggard, hunted man. He had to hide himself in unfrequented corners, cower beneath the shadow of trees on park benches till the light strengthened and morning shook the city into life. Then, as its reawakening tides began to surge round him, he made a furtive way--for the first time in his life fearful of his fellow men--to the railway station, and there took the earliest south-bound train for the Mexican border. The fire had died down, the leaden light of coming day was filtering in through the crack between the half-drawn curtains, when the shrouded shape on the floor moved and a deep groan broke upon the stillness. Another followed it, groans of physical anguish beating on awakening consciousness. An early riser from the floor above heard them as he stole downward, stopped, listened, knocked, then receiving no reply, opened the door and peered fearfully in. In the dim room, cut with a sword of faint light, he saw the covered shape, and, as he stood terrified, heard the groan repeated and saw the drapery twitched. Shouting his fears over the balustrade, he rushed in, flung the curtains wide, tore off the table-cloth, and in the rush of pallid light, saw Harney, leaden eyed, withered to a waxen pallor, smeared with the blood of the cut wrist which he feebly moved, struggling back to existence. CHAPTER XXV HAVE YOU COME AT LAST “Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare.” --OMAR KHAYYAM. At ten o’clock Barron returned to the Garcia house. His search for Mariposa in such accustomed haunts as the Mercantile Library, the shops on Kearney Street, and Mrs. Willers’, had been fruitless. Mrs. Willers was again at _The Trumpet_ office, where another and more important portion of the Woman’s Page was going to press, but Edna was at home, and told Barron that neither she nor her mother had seen Mariposa since the lesson of the day before. In returning to the house he had hopes of finding her there. From the first his anxiety had been keen. Now, as he put his key in the lock, it clutched his heart with a suffocating force. The house was silent as he entered, and then the sound of his step in the hall called the head of young Mrs. Garcia to the opened door of the kitchen. The first glimpse of her face told him Mariposa had not returned. “Have you got her?” cried the young woman eagerly. “No,” he answered, his voice sounding colorless and flat. “I thought she might be back here.”