The strain of the Markham blood rushed hotly, at the instant, in Lans's veins. It gave him courage and strength to forget—the Hertfords.
He took Cynthia to Trouble Neck and manfully told Marcia Lowe what had occurred. The little doctor, worn by anxiety, was almost prostrated.
"No one knows but what Cynthia was here all last night," she said. "I've lied to Tod Greeley. I told him you had not taken Cynthia; that she was ill with headache."
"Now!" Cynthia laughed lightly; "you see we need not have done that silly thing at Sudley's Gap."
Marcia Lowe began to cry softly.
"Oh! dear," she faltered, "but Smith Crothers knows and Sandy Morley, too. Oh! I have been so blind, so foolish, and you have been such mad children."
"I am going to Sandy at once," Lans explained. The plain common-sense atmosphere of the cabin and the little doctor's evident suffering were calming Treadwell's hot Southern blood and giving a touch of stern prosaic grimness to the business.
Cynthia, once she was safe with Marcia Lowe, was so unflatteringly happy that Lans Treadwell might well be pardoned for thinking her lacking in ordinary mentality, and this thought was like a dash of ice water on his growing chilliness. He became awkward and nervous. He felt like a man who had run headlong to a goal only to find that it was the wrong one, with no strength or power to retrace his steps he owed to defeat and failure, and in that mood he sought Sandy.