When he was out of hearing the two men relieved their feelings in language that perhaps it would be better not to put in print.

“And the worst of it is,” remarked the novelist, “it’s so damned dangerous to deny something that does not exist or make explanations in answer to charges that are not put into words.”

“I could scarcely refrain from kicking the beast down the hill,” said Aaron King, savagely.

“Which”—­the other returned—­“would have complicated matters exceedingly, and would have accomplished nothing at all.  For the girl’s sake, store your wrath against the day of judgment which, if I read the signs aright, is sure to come.”

* * * * *

When Sibyl Andres went down the canyon to the camp in the sycamores, that morning, the world, to her, was very bright.  Her heart sang with joyous freedom amid the scenes that she so loved.  Care-free and happy, as when, in the days of her girlhood, she had gone to visit the spring glade, she still was conscious of a deeper joy than in her girlhood she had ever known.

When she returned again up the canyon, all the brightness of her day was gone.  Her heart was heavy with foreboding fear.  She was oppressed with a dread of some impending evil which she could not understand.  At every sound in the mountain wild-wood, she started.  Time and again, as if expecting pursuit, she looked over her shoulder—­poised like a creature of the woods ready for instant panic-stricken flight.  So, without pausing to cast for trout, or even to go down to the stream, she returned home; where Myra Willard, seeing her come so early and empty handed, wondered.  But to the woman’s question, the girl only answered that she had changed her mind—­that, after recovering her gloves and fly-book at the camp of their friends, she had decided to come home.  The woman with the disfigured face, knowing that Aaron King was leaving the hills the next day, thought that she understood the girl’s mood, and wisely made no comment.

The artist and Conrad Lagrange went to spend their last evening in the hills with their friends.  Brian Oakley, too, dropped in.  But neither of the three men mentioned the name of James Rutlidge in the presence of the women; while Sibyl was, apparently, again her own bright and happy self—­carrying on a fanciful play of words with the novelist, singing with the artist, and making music for them all with her violin.  But before the evening was over, Conrad Lagrange found an opportunity to tell the Ranger of the incident of the morning, and of the construction that James Rutlidge had evidently put upon Sibyl’s call at the camp.  Brian Oakley,—­thinking of the night before, and how the man must have seen the artist and the girl coming down the Oak Knoll trail in the twilight,—­swore softly under his breath.

Chapter XXIII

Outside the Canyon Gates Again