"I am taking you at your sister's valuation and trusting you very fully, Mr. Bigelow. You are quite sure you were followed, you and Mr. Ballard, on the day before the dynamiting of the canal?"
"No; I merely suspected it. I wasn't sure enough to warrant me in calling Ballard's attention to the single horseman who seemed to be keeping us in view. But in the light of later events——"
"Yes; I know," she interrupted hastily. "Were you near enough to identify the man if—if you should see him again?"
"Oh, no. Most of the time he was a mere galloping dot in the distance. Only once—it was when Ballard and I had stopped to wrangle over a bit of deforesting vandalism on the part of the contractors—I saw him fairly as he drew rein on a hilltop in our rear."
"Describe him for me," she directed, briefly.
"I'm afraid I can't do that. I had only this one near-by glimpse of him, you know. But I remarked that he was riding a large horse, like one of those in your father's stables; that he sat straight in the saddle; and that he was wearing some kind of a skirted coat that blew out behind him when he wheeled to face the breeze."
Miss Craigmiles sat up in the hammock and pressed her fingers upon her closed eyes. When she spoke again after the lapse of a long minute, it was to ask Bigelow to retell the story of the brief fight in the darkness at the sand arroyo on the night of the explosion.
The Forestry man went over the happenings of the night, and of the day following, circumstantially, while the growing moon tilted like a silver shallop in a sea of ebony toward the distant Elks, and the groups and pairs on the broad portico rearranged themselves choir-wise to sing hymns for which one of the Cantrell sisters went to the piano beyond the open windows of the drawing-room to play the accompaniments.
When the not too harmonious chorus began to drone upon the windless night air, Miss Craigmiles came out of her fit of abstraction and thanked Bigelow for his patience with her.
"It isn't altogether morbid curiosity on my part," she explained, half pathetically. "Some day I may be able to tell you just what it is—but not to-night. Now you may go and rescue Madge from the major, who has been 'H'm-ha-ing' her to extinction for the last half-hour. And if you're brave enough you may tell Mr. Ballard that his bass is something dreadful—or send him here and I'll tell him."