“Why, Miss Chester,” he said.  “What are you doing here?  You came near getting hurt.”

“I am bound for the Wilsons’, but I must have lost my way in the darkness.  I think you have cut my face.”  She controlled her fright firmly.

“That’s too bad,” one said.  “We mistook you for—­” And the other broke in, sharply, “You’d better run along.  We’re waiting for some one.”

Helen hastened back by the route she had come, knowing that there was still time, and that as yet her uncle’s emissaries had not laid hands upon Glenister.  She had overheard the Judge and McNamara plotting to drag the town with a force of deputies, seizing not only her two friends, but every man suspected of being a Vigilante.  The victims were to be jailed without bond, without reason, without justice, while the mechanism of the court was to be juggled in order to hold them until fall, if necessary.  They had said that the officers were already busy, so haste was a crying thing.  She sped down the dark streets towards the house of Cherry Malotte, but found no light nor answer to her knock.  She was distracted now, and knew not where to seek next among the thousand spots which might hide the man she wanted.  What chance had she against the posse sweeping the town from end to end?  There was only one; he might be at the Northern Theatre.  Even so, she could not reach him, for she dared not go there herself.  She thought of Fred, her Jap boy, but there was no time.  Wasted moments meant failure.

Roy had once told her that he never gave up what he undertook.  Very well, she would show that even a girl may possess determination.  This was no time for modesty or shrinking indecision, so she pulled the veil more closely about her face and took her good name into her hands.  She made rapidly towards the lighted streets which cast a skyward glare, and from which, through the breathless calm, arose the sound of carousal.  Swiftly she threaded the narrow alleys in search of the theatre’s rear entrance, for she dared not approach from the front.  In this way she came into a part of the camp which had lain hidden from her until now, and of the existence of which she had never dreamed.

The vices of a city, however horrible, are at least draped scantily by the mantle of convention, but in a great mining-camp they stand naked and without concealment.  Here there were rows upon rows of crib-like houses clustered over tortuous, ill-lighted lanes, like blow-flies swarming to an unclean feast.  From within came the noise of ribaldry and debauch.  Shrill laughter mingled with coarse, maudlin songs, till the clinging night reeked with abominable revelry.  The girl saw painted creatures of every nationality leaning from windows or beckoning from doorways, while drunken men collided with her, barred her course, challenged her, and again and again she was forced to slip from their embraces.  At last the high bulk of the theatre building loomed a short distance ahead.