“Beg parding all over, Miss Crabb, I meant bonnet,” he hurried to say.
“Oh, it’s all right, I assure you,” she replied, writing rapidly, “it’s a delightfully fresh and artistic bit of special coloring.”
Miss Crabb’s clothes were badly torn and she looked as if she had spent the night wretchedly, but with the exception of a few slight scratches and bruises she was unhurt.
“Well jes’ look a there, will ye!” exclaimed Tolliver as he spied Mose. There was more of admiration than anger in his voice. “Ef thet ther ’fernal dog haint got yer chin-ribbon in his ole mouth, I’m er rooster!”
“Chin-ribbon,” repeated Miss Crabb, making a note, “I’m er rooster,” and she smiled with intense satisfaction. “You don’t know, Mr. Tolliver, how much I am indebted to you.”
“Not a tall, Miss Crabb, not a tall. Don’t mention of it,” he humbly said, “hit taint wo’th talkin’ erbout.”
The morning was in full blow now and the cat-birds were singing sweetly down the ravine. Overhead a patch of blue sky gleamed and burned with the true empyrean glow. Far away, down in the valley by the little river, a breakfast horn was blown with many a mellow flourish and a cool gentle breeze with dew on its wings fanned Miss Crabb’s sallow cheeks and rustled Tolliver’s tawny beard. At the sound of the horn Mose sprang to his feet and loped away with the bit of ribbon fluttering from his mouth.
X.
It was late in the forenoon before it was discovered at Hotel Helicon that Miss Crabb was missing, and even then there arose so many doubts about the tragic side of the event that before any organized search for her had been begun, she returned, appearing upon the scene mounted behind Wesley Tolliver on a small, thin, wiry mountain mule.
Crane and Peck each drew a deep, swift sigh of relief upon seeing her, for the sense of guilt in their breasts had been horrible. They had by tacit conspiracy prevented any examination of Eagle’s Nest, for they dreaded what might be disclosed. Of course they did not mean to hide the awful fate of the poor girl, nor would they willingly have shifted the weight of their dreadful responsibility, but it was all so much like a vivid dream, so utterly strange and theatrical as it arose in their memories, that they could not fully believe in it.