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 "You came, you saved me when my hand was not quick and strong enough to meet my resolution to save myself. We must think of it; the thought of it will bind us closer in the bitter trials and dark days we must meet along the way, querido mio."

"Yes, we must think of it," he granted, his head bent, his voice low.

In the silence that fell they seemed to be thinking of it, of what a few moments' mischance along the way, a minute's delay in starting at the summons of old Manuel, would have brought in sorrow to them both. When Alma looked into his face at last, tears trembled in her eyes. She put out her hand to seek his, blindly through the veiling shower, as a child seeks to touch and clasp, and express in its fondling a greater trust and confidence than its tongue has mastered words to speak.

"You came," she said, simply and sufficiently.

There was still such an unsettled air of turmoil about the place that neither of them could turn from the past troubles and put them behind at once, no matter for the apparent security and peace of the present hour. Barrett was first to break upon their musing.

"I'm puzzled over what Findlay did with his money," he said. "I hoped to recover some of it and turn it into the treasury. He had only a few hundred dollars, enough to pay his and Cattle Kate's funeral expenses, when he—died."

"Teresa told me," Alma said. "Some way, I don't believe he had much, Ed. Manuel says he'd been buying the sheriff of this county off a long time, and I expect that came high. Then he had so many hangers-on that