Winston smiled a trifle grimly.  “I think,” he said, “that question will very shortly be answered for you.”

Macdonald held his hand up, and a rapid thud of hoofs came faintly through the silence.

“Troopers!  They are coming here,” he said.

“Yes,” said Winston.  “I fancy they will relieve you from any further difficulty.”

Dane strode to one of the windows, and glanced at Colonel Barrington as he pulled back the catch.  Winston, however, shook his head, and a little flush crept into Dane’s bronzed face.

“Sorry.  Of course you are right,” he said.  “It will be better that they should acquit you.”

No one moved for a few more minutes, and then with a trooper behind him Sergeant Stimson came in, and laid his hand on Winston’s shoulder.

“I have a warrant for your apprehension, farmer Winston,” he said.  “You probably know the charge against you.”

“Yes,” said Winston simply.  “I hope to refute it.  I will come with you.”

He went out, and Barrington stared at the men about him.  “I did not catch the name before.  That was the man who shot the police trooper in Alberta?”

“No, sir,” said Dane, very quietly.  “Nothing would induce me to believe it of him!”

Barrington looked at him in bewilderment.  “But he must have done—­unless,” he said, and ended with a little gasp.  “Good Lord!  There was the faint resemblance, and they changed horses—­it is horrible.”

Dane’s eyes were very compassionate as he laid his hand gently on his leader’s shoulder.

“Sir,” he said, “you have our sympathy, and I am sorry that to offer it is all we can do.  Now, I think we have stayed too long already.”

They went out, and left Colonel Barrington sitting alone with a gray face at the head of the table.

It was a minute or two later when Winston swung himself into the saddle at the door of the Grange.  All the vehicles had not left as yet, and there was a little murmur of sympathy when the troopers closed in about him.  Still, before they rode away one of the men wheeled his horse aside, and Winston saw Maud Barrington standing bareheaded by his stirrup.  The moonlight showed that her face was impassive but curiously pale.

“We could not let you go without a word, and you will come back to us with your innocence made clear,” she said.

Her voice had a little ring in it that carried far, and her companions heard her.  What Winston said they could not hear, and he did not remember it, but he swung his hat off, and those who saw the girl at his stirrup recognized with confusion that she alone had proclaimed her faith, while they had stood aside from him.  Then the Sergeant raised his hand and the troopers rode forward with their prisoner.

In the meanwhile, Courthorne was pressing south for the American frontier, and daylight was just creeping across the prairie when the pursuers, who had found his trail and the ranch he obtained a fresh horse at, had sight of him.  There were three of them, riding wearily, grimed with dust, when a lonely mounted figure showed for a moment on the crest of a rise.  In another minute, it dipped into a hollow, and Corporal Payne smiled grimly.