The black-caps pipe among the reeds,   And there'll be rain to follow;
There is a as of wind
  In every coign and hollow;
The do of their fears
While swinging on the barley-ears.
—Amélie Rives.
 
The Judge and Mrs. Claiborne were dining with some old friends in the valley, and Shirley, left alone, carried to the table several letters that had come in the late mail. The events of the afternoon filled her mind, and she was not sorry to be alone. It occurred to her that she was building up a formidable tower of strange secrets, and she wondered whether, having begun by keeping her own counsel as to the attempts she had witnessed against John Armitage's life, she ought now to unfold all she knew to her father or to Dick. In the twentieth century homicide was not a common practice among men she knew or was likely to know; and the feeling of for her silence crossed lances with a deepening sympathy for Armitage. She had learned where he was hiding, and she smiled at the recollection of the bit of strategy she had practised upon Chauvenet.
 
The maid who served Shirley with surprise the long pauses in which her young mistress sat staring across the table lost in reverie. A pretty picture was Shirley in these : one hand raised to her cheek, bright from the sting of the spring wind in the hills. Her forearm, white and firm and strong, was circled by a band of Roman gold, the only she wore, and when she lifted her hand with its quick gesture, the trinket flashed away from her wrist and clasped the warm flesh as though in joy of the closer . Her hair was swept up high from her brow; her nose, straight, like her father's, was saved from by a sensitive mouth, all of kindness and mirth—but we take unfair advantage! A girl dining in candle-light with only her dreams for company should be safe from impertinent eyes.
 
She had kept Dick's letter till the last. He wrote often and in the key of his talk. She dropped a lump of sugar into her coffee-cup and read his hurried :
 
"What do you think has happened now? I have fourteen dollars' worth of telegrams from Sanderson—wiring from some God-forsaken hole in Montana, that it's all rot about Armitage being that fake von Kissel. The newspaper accounts of the exposé at my supper party had just reached him, and he says Armitage was on his (Armitage's) all that summer the noble baron was our northern sea-coast. Where, may I ask, does this leave me? And what cad gave that story to the papers? And where and who is John Armitage? Keep this mum for the present—even from the governor. If Sanderson is right, Armitage will turn up again—he has a weakness for turning up in your neighborhood!—and sooner or later he's bound to settle accounts with Chauvenet. Now that I think of it, who in the devil is he! And why didn't Armitage call him down there at the club? As I think over the whole business my mind grows , and I feel as though I had been kicked by a horse."
 
* * * * *
 
Shirley laughed softly, keeping the note open before her and referring to it as she stirred her coffee. She could not answer any of Dick's questions, but her interest in the contest between Armitage and Chauvenet was by this latest turn in the affair. She read for an hour in the library, but the air was close, and she threw aside her book, drew on a light coat and went out upon the . A storm was stealing down from the hills, and the fitful wind tasted of rain. She walked the length of the veranda several times, then paused at the farther end of it, where steps led out into the pergola. There was still a mist of starlight, and she looked out upon the vague outlines of the garden with thoughts of its needs and the gardener's work for the morrow. Then she was aware of a light step far out in the pergola, and listened carelessly to mark it, thinking it one of the house servants returning from a neighbor's; but the sound was , and as she waited it ceased . She was about to turn into the house to summon help when she heard a stir in the shrubbery in quite another part of the garden, and in a moment the stooping figure of a man moved swiftly toward the pergola.
 
Shirley stood quite still, watching and listening. The sound of steps in the pergola reached her again, then the rush of flight, and out in the garden a flying figure in and out among the walks. For several minutes two dark figures played at vigorous hide-and-seek. Occasionally underfoot and shrubbery snapped back with a sharp swish where it was caught and held for support at corners. Pursued and pursuer were alike silent; the scene was like a pantomime.
 
Then the tables seemed to be turned; the bulkier figure of the pursuer was now in flight; and Shirley lost both for a moment, but immediately a dark form rose at the wall; she heard the scratch of feet upon the brick surface as a man gained the top, turned and lifted his arm as though aiming a weapon.
 
Then a dark object, through the air, struck him squarely in the face and he tumbled over the wall, and Shirley heard him crash through the hedge of the neighboring estate, then all was............