Molly Lassiter followed her usual daily routine, visiting back and forth with the Cranstons, Lees and other neighbors, yet beneath it all she was conscious of a certain uneasy expectancy, a sense of waiting for something to transpire. There had been no word from Bart and his whereabouts were unknown to her. Somewhere Bart was making a relentless hunt for Noll and she expected hourly to hear news of their meeting. She knew of Carver’s having joined the marshal’s posse at Oval Springs and there was ever the possibility that she would get word that he had fallen in the county-seat war. She had once told Carver that it was the woman’s portion to wait for bad news,--and now she was waiting. In another three weeks her school would open for the mid-winter term. A few days past her interest had centered entirely on this great event but now she found it had been relegated to a position of secondary importance in her mind; would retain its minor significance until such time as both Bart and Carver were safe home once more. Then a sympathetic grub-liner dropped past with the word that Noll had been killed in the county-seat fight. The bearer of the tidings, in an awkward effort to lessen the shock of what he must impart, prefaced his announcement with a rambling admonition to prepare herself for the worst, and she was ready to shriek out to him to hasten on to the point of his message. She found time to wonder at the fact that her chief concern was a terrible dread that something had happened to Carver. Then, at last, the man haltingly explained that Noll had passed out of this world, one more victim of the county-seat feud. Her reaction was so intense that she dropped to a seat on the doorsill and stared mutely at her informer. The man rode away cursing himself for breaking the news so abruptly. After his departure she accused herself of great wickedness for the reason that she could not wring one atom of regret from the fact of Noll’s passing. Rather, after the fear for both Carver and Bart which had been roused by the man’s lengthy preamble, she had experienced a positive relief to find that the news concerned Noll. She hoped that the man had not divined this, and again she accused herself of a callousness which she had never before suspected as a part of her make-up. She had known that it was only a question of time until Noll would come to his end during some piece of outlawry, a bank hold-up or some brawl in town, and it was infinitely preferable that it should have happened in this way instead,--as the victim of the county-seat war in which good men had gone down on both sides. It eliminated the certainty of a fratricidal shooting between Noll and Bart in the very near future. It was better this way.