It was there almost as he spoke, marked by a white-painted cross in a circle of whitewashed stones.  John Aldous felt a sudden shiver pass through his companion.  She turned from the window.  Through her veil he saw her lips tighten.  Until he left the car half an hour later the man in the second seat ahead talked of Templeton’s grave and a dozen other graves along the right of way.  He was a rock-hog, and a specialist on the subject of graves.  Inwardly Aldous cursed him roundly.  He cursed him all the way to Tete Jaune, for to him he attributed the change which had again come over Joanne.

This change she could only partly conceal from him under her veil.  She asked him many questions about Tete Jaune and the Blacktons, and tried to take an interest in the scenery they were passing.  In spite of this he could see that she was becoming more and more nervous as they progressed toward the end of their journey.  He felt the slow dampening of his own joy, the deadening clutch of yesterday at his heart.  Twice she lifted her veil for a moment and he saw she was pale and the tense lines had gathered about her mouth again.  There was something almost haggard in her look the second time.

In the early dusk of evening they arrived at Tete Jaune.  Aldous waited until the car had emptied itself before he rose from his seat.  Joanne’s hand clutched at his arm as they walked down the aisle.  He felt the fierce pressure of her fingers in his flesh.  On the car platform they paused for a moment, and he felt her throbbing beside him.  She had taken her hand from his arm, and he turned suddenly.  She had raised her veil.  Her face was dead white.  And she was staring out over the sea of faces under them in a strange questing way, and her breath came from between her slightly parted lips as if she had been running.  Amazed for the moment, John Aldous did not move.  Somewhere in that crowd Joanne expected to find a face she knew! The truth struck him dumb—­made him inert and lifeless.  He, too, stared as if in a trance.  And then, suddenly, every drop of blood in his body blazed into fierce life.

In the glow of one of the station lamps stood a group of men.  The faces of all were turned toward them.  One he recognized—­a bloated, leering face grinning devilishly at them.  It was Quade!

A low, frightened cry broke from Joanne’s lips, and he knew that she, too, had seen him.  But it was not Quade that she had looked for.  It was not his face that she had expected to see nor because of him that she had lifted her veil for the mob!

He stepped down from the car and gave her his hand.  Her fingers clutched his convulsively.  And they were cold as the fingers of the dead.

CHAPTER X

A moment later some one came surging through the crowd, and called Aldous by name.  It was Blackton.  His thin, genial face with its little spiked moustache rose above the sea of heads about him, and as he came he grinned a welcome.