He was shaken and very weary.  His mind worked slowly and torpidly, so that even grief came with an effort.  He was grieved; he knew that.  Some one who had loved him and depended on him was gone; some one who loved life had lost it.  He ran his hand over his singed hair.

“Where is Edith?”

Dan’s voice hardened.

“She’s out somewhere.  It’s like her, isn’t it?”

Willy Cameron roused himself.

“Out?” he said incredulously.  “Don’t you know where she is?”

“No.  And I don’t care.”

Willy Cameron was fully alert now, and staring down at Dan.

“I’ll tell you something, Dan.  She probably saved my life to-night.  I’ll tell you how later.  And if she is still out there is something wrong.”

“She used to stay out to all hours.  She hasn’t done it lately, but I thought—­”

Dan got up and reached for his hat.

“Where’ll I start to look for her?”

But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make.  He was trying to think straight, but it was not easy.  He knew that for some reason Edith had not waited until midnight to open the envelope.  She had telephoned her message clearly, he had learned, but with great excitement, saying that there was a plot against his life, and giving the farmhouse and the message he had left in full; and she had not rung off until she knew that a posse would start at once.  And that had been before eleven o’clock.

Three hours.  He looked at his watch.  Either she had been hurt or was a prisoner, or—­he came close to the truth then.  He glanced at Dan, standing hat in hand.

“We’ll try the hospitals first, Dan,” he said.  “And the best way to do that is by telephone.  I don’t like Ellen being left alone here, so you’d better let me do that.”

Dan acquiesced unwillingly.  He resumed his seat in the hail, and Willy Cameron went upstairs.  Ellen was moving softly about, setting in order the little upper room.  The windows were opened, and through them came the soft night wind, giving a semblance of life and movement under it to the sheet that covered the quiet figure on the bed.

Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of thankfulness in his heart.  She had been saved much, and if from some new angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision of eternity, and its understanding.  She would see how sometimes the soul must lose here to gain beyond.  She would see the world filled with its Ediths, and she would know that they too were a part of the great plan, and that the breaking of the body sometimes freed the soul.

He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small inarticulate prayer, standing beside the bed while Ellen straightened the few toilet articles on the dresser, that she might have rest, and then a long and placid happiness.  And love, he added.  There would be no Heaven without love.