Page:Tomlinson--The rider of the black horse.djvu/166

150 summons in a louder tone. "Dirck! Are you in the house? Come out here a minute!"

"What it was you want?"

Robert turned sharply in his seat as the unexpected question came from behind him, and beheld Dirck's wife and little girl approaching from the barn.

"You startled me, Mina!" he said foolishly, thrusting his pistol back into his belt. "And how is the little Mina?" he added lightly, glancing down at the child, and then in response to her pleading bending low and swinging her up on the seat before him on the horse's back.

"She was well, as you see," said the child's mother simply.

"Mina, where is Dirck?" inquired Robert quickly.

"He was not here." "Where is he?" a fear creeping into Robert's heart, as he spoke, that Captain Underdunck's letter was not based upon an entirely false rumor.

"I do not know. He was not here all night. I was afraid." There were no tears in Mina's eyes, and her voice did not break as she spoke, and yet her anxiety and suffering were so apparent that Robert's own heart in-