“Ze young lady—she very rich young lady, Miss Merle.”
Dick laughed.
“Oh, that’s quite another prize, Pierre,” he replied. “And if she is so very rich, as you say, why that puts her further out of my reach than ever.”
Pierre nodded his head determinedly.
“If I was you, Mr. Willoughby, ze prize I would try to win is ze beautiful young lady.”
When Pierre had gone, Dick again lay back in the long chair. But he was day-dreaming and love-dreaming now, wondering whether Merle Farnsworth really cared for him, whether he might dare whisper to her the story of his passionate love.
CHAPTER XXI—A Debt of Honor
PUBLIC excitement had been running high over the approaching trial of Dick Willoughby, but his delivery from jail by the masked night-riders came as the culminating climax. Mystery and romance were piling up. Despite the strength of the circumstantial evidence, the sudden fate that had overtaken the young heir to San Antonio rancho had been shrouded with uncertainty; no witness had seen the actual doing of the murderous deed. The sensational arrest of Dick Willoughby had been followed by his still more sensational disappearance; for he seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth—he had been spirited to some place of concealment to which there was not the slightest clue, while also the identity of his rescuers remained a profound enigma.