The woman watched him closely.  “She took only her violin.  She went sometime after lunch—­down the canyon, I think.  Do you wish particularly to see her, Mr. Oakley?”

It was evident to the woman that the officer was relieved.  “Oh, no; she wouldn’t be going far with her violin.  If she went down the canyon, it’s all right anyway.  But I stopped in to tell the girl that she must be careful, for a while.  There’s an escaped convict ranging somewhere in my district.  I received the word this morning, and have been up around Lone Cabin and Burnt Pine and the head of Clear Creek to see if I could start anything.  I didn’t find any signs, but the information is reliable.  Tell Sibyl that I say she must not go out without her gun—­that if I catch her wandering around unarmed, I’ll pack her off back to civilization, pronto.”

“I’ll tell her,” said Myra Willard, “and I’ll help her to remember.  It would be better, I suppose, if she stayed at home; but that seems so impossible.”

“She’ll be all right if she has her gun,” asserted the Ranger, confidently.  “I’d back the girl against anything I ever met up with—­when she has her artillery.  By the way, Myra, have your neighbors below called yet?”

“No—­at least, not while I have been at home.  I have been berrying, two or three times.  They might have come while I was out.”

“Has Sibyl met them yet?” came the next question.

“She has not mentioned it, if she has.”

“H-m-m,” mused Brian Oakley.

The woman’s love for the girl prompted her to quick suspicion of the Ranger’s manner.

“What is it, Mr. Oakley?” she asked.  “Has the child been indiscreet?  Has she done anything wrong?  Has she been with those men?”

“She has called upon one of them several times,” returned Brian, smiling.  “Mr. King is painting that little glade by the old spring at the foot of the bank, you know, and I guess she stumbled onto him.  The place is one of her favorite spots.  But bless your heart, Myra, there’s no harm in it.  It would be natural for her to get interested in any one making a picture of a place she loves as she does that old spring glade.  She has spent days at a time there—­ever since she was big enough to go that far from home.”

“It’s strange that she has not mentioned it to me,” said the woman—­troubled in spite of the Ranger’s reassuring words.

The man directed his attention suddenly to his horse; “Max!  You let Sibyl’s roses alone.”  The animal turned his head questioningly toward his master.  “Back!” said the Ranger, “back!” At his word, the chestnut promptly backed across the yard until the officer called, “That will do,” when he halted, and, with an impatient toss of his head, again looked toward the porch, inquiringly.  “You are all right now,” said the man.  Whereupon the horse began contentedly cropping the grass.

“I met Mr. King, accidentally, once, at the depot in Fairlands,” continued the woman with the disfigured face.  “He impressed me, then, as being a genuinely good man—­a true gentleman.  But, judging from his books, Conrad Lagrange is not a man I would wish Sibyl to meet.  I have wondered at the artist’s friendship with him.”