She lifted her eyebrows in well simulated surprise.

“But the envelope?”

Now he spoke swiftly and she knew that he had made up his mind that she was hiding nothing, that she knew nothing, for there was a note of relief in his words.

“I had his cabin searched last night, while we all were at the dance.  It was found there.  There was no sign of the money!”

Again she tossed away the envelope as though it no longer had any interest for her.

“A man,” she said contemptuously, “who would not destroy a piece of evidence like that, is a fool!”

The matter was dropped there; one would have said it was forgotten by both of them.  For the rest of the day Winifred Waverly appeared to be much interested in her book, Pollard seemed busy in his office or upon the street.  But the girl realized that the man was taking no chances and that there was going to be little chance of her riding the twenty miles to the Poison Hole without his knowing of it.  She let the day go with no thought of making the trip, satisfying herself with the knowledge which she had gleaned from the conversation she had overheard at the schoolhouse, and with the comforting thought that she had ten days yet.

Upon the second day following the dance she saw Broderick and Pollard talking earnestly out under the pear trees.  Broderick, at his boots whipping impatiently with his riding whip, did not come to the house as was his custom, but going back to the gate flung himself upon his horse and rode away.  That same afternoon he came again, and this time Cole Dalton, the sheriff, was with him.  They were met by Pollard at the front door, and for an hour the girl in her room could hear their low voices in the room below her.

The third day came and went and she saw no one but Pollard and Mrs. Riddell.  Pollard was unusually silent, and again and again she saw that his eyes were hard, his mouth cruel.  She began to forget that he was kin to her; she began to see only that here was a man playing his game with high, very high, stakes, that he was watchful and determined, that he was not the sort to let anything, no matter what, stand between him and the thing he had made up his mind to do.  She saw that he was growing nervous and sensed that he was in that frame of mind when men act swiftly and unscrupulously.  She took no step about the house that Pollard did not know of it.

The fourth day came, and her own nerves were strained to snapping.  If she could only do something!  She must do something.  But what?  If Broderick were the guilty man, and from a score of little things, she knew that he was, then Henry Pollard was no less guilty.  If Pollard were a part of the horrible scheme, how about Cole Dalton, the sheriff?  She began to think that she saw why the months had gone by and Dalton had made no arrests!  If he was one of them, if the man paid by the county to defend the county against outlawry were hand and glove with the outlaws, to whom then could she turn?