That night, she slept but little.  With the morning, every nerve demanded action, action.  She felt as though if she could not spend herself in physical exertion she would go mad.  Taking her lunch, and telling her companion that she was going for a good, full day with the trout; she was starting off, when the woman called her back.

“You have forgotten Mr. Oakley’s warning, dear.  You are not to go unarmed, you know.”

“Oh, bother that old convict, Brian Oakley is so worried about,” cried the girl.  “I don’t like to carry a gun when I am fishing.  It’s only an extra load.”  But, never-the-less, as she spoke, she went back to the porch; where Myra Willard handed her a belt of cartridges, with a serviceable Colt revolver in the holster.  There was no hint of awkwardness when the girl buckled the belt about her waist and settled the holster in its place at her hip.

“You will be careful, won’t you, dear,” said the woman, earnestly.

Lifting her face for another good-by kiss, the girl answered, “Of course, dear mother heart.”  Then, with a laugh—­“I’ll agree to shoot the first man I meet, and identify him afterwards—­if it will make you easier in your mind.  You won’t worry, will you?”

Myra Willard smiled.  “Not a bit, child.  I know how Brian Oakley loves you, and he says that he has no fear for you if you are armed.  He takes great chances himself, that man, but he would send us back to Fairlands, in a minute, if he thought you were in any danger in your rambles.”

Beside the roaring Clear Creek, Sibyl seated self upon a great boulder—­her rod and flies neglected—­apparently unmindful of the purpose that had brought her to the stream.  Her eyes were not upon the swirling pool at her feet, but were lifted to a spot, a thousand feet up on Oak Knoll, where she knew the pipe-line trail lay, and where Croesus had made the momentous decision that had resulted in her comradeship with Aaron King.  Following the canyon wall with her eyes—­as though in her mind she walked the thread-like path—­from Oak Knoll to the fire-break a mile from the reservoir; her gaze then traced the crest of the Galenas, resting finally upon that clump of pines high up on the point that was so clearly marked against the sky.  Once, she laid aside her rod, and slipped the creel from her shoulder.  But even as she set out, she hesitated and turned back; resolutely taking up her fishing-tackle again, as though, angry with herself for her state of mind, she was determined to indulge no longer her mood of indecision.

But the fishing did not go well.  To properly cast a trout-fly, one’s thoughts must be upon the art.  A preoccupied mind and wandering attention tends to a tangled line, a snarled leader, and all sorts of aggravating complications.  Sibyl—­usually so skillful at this most delicate of sports—­was as inaccurate and awkward, this day, as the merest tyro.  The many pools and falls and swirling eddies of Clear Creek held for her, now, memories more attractive, by far, than the wary trout they sheltered.  The familiar spots she had known since childhood were haunted by a something that made them seem new and strange.