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 no idea what it would do to you, or I'd turned back yesterday."

His hold warmed her; she liked him for that grasp, neither too firm nor too weak, nor claiming any unpleasant proprietorship in her because she had gone from her grandfather's house with him. While they had been talking, she knew now that he had been thinking throughout more about the effect of these events upon her than upon himself.

He took his hand from her as soon as she ceased quivering and, turning about to the gray glass of the old store window, he observed, as she had been seeing, that some one was bringing out the sled and team which Sam Green Sky yesterday had driven and was pulling up before her grandfather's house. It appeared to be Sam who was in the seat; he got down and went into the house to reappear quickly, carrying a suit case which he placed on the sled; a woman followed.

"Who's leaving the house?" Barney inquired.

"Mrs. Kincheloe," Ethel said, recognizing Miss Platt's brown muskrat coat. "But I don't think she is going away. I believe that's my suit case which Sam carried. She's bringing it to me; you see, grandfather is sending me off."

She realized that she ought to feel cut off and alone; but she did not. Indeed, she had never felt less lonely in all her life. Up to this moment—it seemed—she had been solitary. When she had had her father, even so long ago as the days on the old ranch when she first inquired of her father why she never saw her mother's people, she had been separated from others by some secret which she was not to be told. The fact that her father knew the secret and would not tell her was in itself something which shut her out from