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Louise lay back in her chair and closed her eyes, fearing their eagerness might betray her. When after a time she opened them again Eliza was slowly rocking back and forth and chewing the confection. Dr. Hoyt's first suggestion had been best. The potion had been prepared in several ways to tempt Eliza, but the candy had been the effectual bait.
"He draws the dreariness rather mild, but you can make out he knows the place." "Captain," I cried, "you've struck another point in this mad business. See here," I went on eagerly, drawing from my pocket a crumpled fragment of the Daily Occidental which I had inherited from Jim: "'misled by Hoyt's Pacific Directory'? Where's Hoyt?" "Let's look into that," said Nares.
Hoyt's brought out to camp, a story that there was an officer who was too much in love with Alice to keep away from the house even after the colonel so ordered, and that he was prowling around the other night and the colonel ordered Leary to shoot him, Leary, who was on post on Number Five.
The housekeeper endeavored most earnestly to dissuade her from taking the contemplated step, assuring her that the doctor would be grieved and displeased; but her arguments produced no effect, and, with tears of regret, she bade her farewell. The sun was setting when Beulah took possession of her room at Mrs. Hoyt's house.
She knew it was the common birthright, the one unchanging heritage of all humanity; yet long vistas of life opened before her, and though, like a pall, the shadow of the tomb hung over the end, it was very distant, very dim. "What makes you look so solemn?" asked Clara, who had been busily engaged in dressing a doll for one of Mrs. Hoyt's children. "Because I feel solemn, I suppose."
The wind sighed and sobbed through the streets, and a few cold drops fell, as she approached Mrs. Hoyt's. Quickening her steps, she ran in by a side entrance, and was soon at Clara's room. The door stood open, and, with bonnet and shawl in her hand, she entered, little prepared to meet her guardian, for she had absented herself with the hope of avoiding him.
"It's an awful story, awful!" he began. "I was riding towards Hoyt's Corners an' when I got about half way there I topped a rise an' saw a nester's house about half a mile away. It wasn't there the last time I rode that way, an' it looked so peaceful an' home-like that I stopped an' looked at it a few minutes.
The story, as he had often reflected since, was as old as lying a broken-legged horse, a wife dying forty miles away, and a horse all saddled which needed only to be mounted and ridden. These thoughts kept him company for a day and when he dismounted before Stevenson's "Hotel" in Hoyt's Corners he summed up his feelings for the enlightenment of his horse. "Damn it, bronc!
Red's tardiness was all the worse because the erring party to the agreement had turned in his saddle at Hoyt's Corners and loosed a flippant and entirely uncalled-for remark about his friend's ideas regarding appointments. "Well, that red-headed Romeo is shore late this time," Hopalong muttered. "Why don't he find a girl closer to home, anyhow?
Re-entering the room Beulah sat down beside Clara, and taking one burning hand in her cool palms, pressed it softly, saying in an encouraging tone: "I feel so much relieved about Willie; he is a great deal better; and I think Mrs. Hoyt's fever is abating. You were not taken so severely as Willie, and if you will go to sleep quietly I believe you will only have a light attack."
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