his eyes to the man as he approached.  What the stranger saw in Clarence’s blazing eyes no one but himself knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity, and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at a furious gallop.  The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instant his knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to follow.  But the next moment he recalled himself, and with an effort began to collect his thoughts.  What was he intending to do, and for what reason!  He had met hundreds of such horsemen before, and caparisoned and accoutred like this, even to the riata.  And he certainly was not dressed like either of the mysterious horsemen whom he had overheard that moonlight evening.  He looked back; the stranger had already slackened his pace, and was slowly disappearing.  Clarence turned and rode on his way.

CHAPTER IX.

Without disclosing the full extent of Jim’s defection and desertion, Clarence was able to truthfully assure the Hopkins family of his personal safety, and to promise that he would continue his quest, and send them further news of the absentee.  He believed it would be found that Jim had been called away on some important business, but that not daring to leave his new shanty exposed and temptingly unprotected, he had made a virtue of necessity by selling it to his neighbors, intending to build a better house on its site after his return.  Having comforted Phoebe, and impulsively conceived further plans for restoring Jim to her,—­happily without any recurrence of his previous doubts as to his own efficacy as a special Providence,—­he returned to the rancho.  If he thought again of Jim’s defection and Gilroy’s warning, it was only to strengthen himself to a clearer perception of his unselfish duty and singleness of purpose.  He would give up brooding, apply himself more practically to the management of the property, carry out his plans for the foundation of a Landlords’ Protective League for the southern counties, become a candidate for the Legislature, and, in brief, try to fill Peyton’s place in the county as he had at the rancho.  He would endeavor to become better acquainted with the half-breed laborers on the estate and avoid the friction between them and the Americans; he was conscious that he had not made that use of his early familiarity with their ways and language which he might have done.  If, occasionally, the figure of the young Spaniard whom he had met on the lonely road obtruded itself on him, it was always with the instinctive premonition that he would meet him again, and the mystery of the sudden repulsion be in some way explained.  Thus Clarence!  But the momentary impulse that had driven him to Fair Plains, the eagerness to set his mind at rest regarding Susy and her relatives, he had utterly forgotten.