"JOHN WAMBUSH."
Westerfelt folded the letter deliberately, and then in a sudden spasm of jealous despair he crumpled it in his hand. He turned his head on the side and pressed down his pillow that he might see Harriet as she sat by the fire. The red firelight shone in her face. She looked tired and troubled.
"Poor girl!" he murmured. "Poor girl! Oh, God, have mercy on me! She loves him—she loves him!"
She looked up and caught his eyes. "Did you want anything?" she asked.
He gave the letter to her. "Burn it, please. I wish I had not read it."
She took it to the fire. The light of the blazing paper flashed on the walls, and then went out.
He remained so silent that she thought he was sleeping, but when she rose to leave the room she caught his glance, so full of dumb misery that her heart sank. She went to her mother in the kitchen. Mrs. Floyd was polishing a pile of knives and forks, and did not look up until Harriet spoke.
"Mother," she said, "I am afraid something has gone wrong with Mr. Westerfelt."
"What do you mean?" asked the old lady in alarm.
"I don't know, but he got a letter this morning, and after he read it he seemed changed and out of heart. He gave it to me to burn, and I never saw such a desperate look on a human face. I know it was the letter, because before he read it he was so—so different."
"Well," said Mrs. Floyd, "it may be only some business matter that's troubling him. Men have all sorts of things to worry about. As for me, I've made a discovery, Harriet, at least I think I have."
"Why, mother!"
Mrs. Floyd put the knives and forks into the knife-box.
"Hettie Fergusson was here just now," she said.
"This early!" exclaimed Harriet, incredulously. "Why, mother, where did she spend the night?"
"At home; that's the curious part about it; she has walked all that three miles since daylight, if she didn't get up before and start through the dark. I never could understand that girl. All the time she was working here she puzzled me. She was so absent-minded, and would jump and scream almost when the door would open. I am glad we didn't need her help any longer. Sometimes I wish she had never come to the hotel."
Harriet stared wonderingly at her mother; then she said:
"Did she want to help us again?"
Mrs. Floyd laughed significantly.
"That's what she pretended she wanted, but she didn't have no more idea of working here than I have of flying through the air at this minute. Harriet, she is dead crazy in love with Toot Wambush. That is the truth about it."
"Why, mother, I can't believe it!" cried Harriet, her brow wrinkling in perplexity. "He hardly ever went with her or talked to her."
"He took her out home with him in a buggy six or seven times to my knowledge," declared Mrs. Floyd, "and there's no telling how often he saw her at home. He is awfully thick with her father. I never was fooled in a woman; she is in love with him, and right now she is worried to death about him. She couldn't hide her anxiety, and asked a good many round-about questions about where he was gone to, and if we knew whether the sheriff was hunting for him now, and if we thought Mr. Westerfelt would prosecute him."
Harriet laughed. "Well, I never dreamt there was a thing between those two. When he asked her to go with him in his buggy out home, I thought it was because she lived on the road to his father's, and that he just did it to accommodate her, and—"
"Oh, I've no doubt that is what he did it for, darling, but she was falling in love with him all the time, and now that he is in trouble, she can't hide it. Do you know her conduct this morning has set me to thinking? The night you and I spent over at Joe Long's I heard Wambush came very near being arrested with a barrel of whiskey he was taking to town, and that he managed to throw the officers off his track while he was talking to Hettie in our back yard. Do you know it ain't a bit unlikely that she helped him play that trick somehow? They say he was laughing down at the store after that about how he gave them the slip. I'll bet she helped him."
"If she is in love with him she did, I reckon," returned Harriet, wisely. "I wish he was in love with her. He is getting entirely too troublesome."
"He'll never care a snap for her as long as you are alive," retorted the old lady. "I'm sorry now that I ever let you go with him so much. He seems to be getting more and more determined to make you marry him whether or no. He is jealous of Mr. Westerfelt." Mrs. Floyd lowered her voice. "If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have fought him as he did. That is at the bottom of it, daughter, and now that he is a regular outlaw I am awfully uneasy. If I ever get a chance, I'm going to convince him that it is useless for him to worry you as he does. I'd rather see you in your grave than married to a man like that."