Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/234

 have told his master something greatly in the latter's interest, which was that from the square hole in the hayloft directly over Tige's manger a pair of eyes were following the man's every movement,—eyes filled with a great fear and the desperation of some wild creature caught in a deadfall.

Hilma Ring, lurking like a hunted beast through the willows skirting the meandering course of the Poison Spider, had believed herself a fugitive, thinking the uproar about the jail behind her the beginnings of pursuit. The girl was in the last extremity of panic. Her accustomed phlegm, heritage of the Norse blood in her, had been dissipated by the whirlwind of events, and now that corroding imagination which rode the wings of the dark out around the little cabin on Teapot roweled her mercilessly.

Prison bars! The crossed branches of the willows sketched them before her eyes. The clank of iron shutting out the world; a loosened stone dropping to strike a bowlder dinned the dreadful sound in her ears. Oh, to get back to the silent places where the land heaves interminably away to the great dike of the mountains! To undo the folly of that ride with