“He has the look of a criminal,” declared Mrs. Lansell, in the positive tone of one who speaks from intimate knowledge of the subject under discussion. “I only hope he isn't going to murder—”
“They're coming back, mama,” interrupted Beatrice, who had been watching closely the hilltop. “No, it's that man, and he is driving the horses.”
“He's chasing them,” corrected her mother testily. “A horse thief, no doubt. He's going to catch them with his snare—”
“Lasso, mama.”
“Well, lasso. Where can Richard be? To think the fellow should be so bold! But out here, with miles upon miles of open, and no police protection anything is possible. We might all be murdered, and no one be the wiser for days—perhaps weeks. There, he has caught them.” She leaned back and clasped her hands, ready to meet with fortitude whatever fate might have in store.
“He's bringing them out to us, mama. Can't you see the man is only trying to help us?”
Mrs. Lansell, beginning herself to suspect him of honest intentions, sniffed dissentingly and let it go at that. The fellow was certainly leading the horses toward them, and Sir Redmond and Dick, appearing over the hill just then, proved beyond doubt that neither had been murdered in cold blood, or in any other unpleasant manner.
“We're all right now, mother,” Dick called, the minute he was near enough.
His mother remarked skeptically that she hoped possibly she had been in too great haste to conceal her valuables—that Miss Hayes might not feel grateful for her presence of mind, and was probably wondering if mud baths were not injurious to fine, jeweled time-pieces. Mrs. Lansell was uncomfortable, mentally and physically, and her manner was frankly chilly when her son presented the stranger as his good friend and neighbor, Keith Cameron. She was still privately convinced that he looked a criminal—though, if pressed, she must surely have admitted that he was an uncommonly good-looking young outlaw. It would seem almost as if she regarded his being a decent, law-abiding citizen as pure effrontery.
Miss Hayes greeted him with a smile of apprehension which plainly amused him. Beatrice was frankly impersonal in her attitude; he represented a new species of the genus man, and she, too, evidently regarded him in the light of a strange animal, viewed unexpectedly at close range.