"It was late in the evening when I got to the fort, and as the doctor would not start out that same night, I went over to the city; as I could not bear to sit still while thinking of the danger you might be in. It was raining, and feeling cold and chilly, I stepped into a saloon to get a drink, when I met a man who was just a-coming out.
"I was so astonished that you could have knocked me down with a wheat-straw, for I would have sworn he was none other than John Dement! But while I stood there, he slipped out, and when I started after him, he was gone. I hunted for an hour, but without success; I could not find him again."
"And there was no mistake?" anxiously asked Nora.
"There may have been. I might have been deceived, and took some other person for him. If it was Dement, he had his whiskers colored black, and his hair trimmed, and of the same color. But I caught his full eye, and you know it is not a common one."
"Yes, it makes me think of a rattlesnake's," shuddered the maiden.
"Well, even if he is innocent about the murder, there is the other charge," added McGuire.
"But that may be false, too."
"I don't think so. And yet," he added, after a slight pause, "he didn't act like a guilty man. I thought it was bravado, then, but now it seems more like the fearlessness of an honest man."
Nora did not answer, although strongly tempted to do so, for fear she would reveal more than was prudent, and in a short time both retired.
A little after noon, on the next day, had Neil McGuire glanced up from his work back of the house and looked almost due west, he would have seen the trim, dainty form of his daughter, as she disappeared in the woods, accompanied by aunt Eunice. And perhaps his mind would have been still more perturbed had he witnessed the fervor with which a certain stalwart, handsome man embraced Nora, while her antiquated duenna placidly stared at the bushy top of a neighboring tree.