* * * * *
The days passed; a fortnight was gone, and yet no news of the young engineer who had so mysteriously disappeared from his home on the night before the arrest of Mrs. Bordine.
That lady was well treated by the sheriff's family, but was not permitted to have communication with the outside world, so that she realized that she was a close prisoner all this time. The reader can easily imagine how the old lady suffered, with a dark cloud hanging over the name of her son. She, of course, firmly believed in his innocence, and would not credit the story that he had fled to escape arrest. There was a mystery about his continued absence for which she could not account, and which gave the good woman no end of trouble.
"I would trust August with my life," she more than once asserted. "He does not come because he fears arrest, but some accident has befallen him, and it may be that we shall none of us see him again, for I fear he is dead."
It was thus the old mother talked to the officers, and to Miss Alstine, who, in the kindness of her heart, visited her lover's mother.
Of course that lover was as nought to the young heiress now. She believed him to be a villain of the deepest dye, yet she could not tell her thoughts to that trusting old mother who seemed so wrapped up in her son.
"The idea that he could harm anybody," declared Mrs. Bordine to Rose, with both plump hands on the girl's shoulders. "Why, he never even so much as killed a chicken without shuddering."
"We will hope that a mistake has been made, dear Mrs. Bordine."
"And you are so kind," returned the old woman with tears in her eyes. "Do you know, Miss Alstine, I want to ask your forgiveness."
"For what, dear?"