light high up in the sky-line seemed to move. It was the headlight of
a train coming over the mountain. A switchman with a lantern was
passing near the car, and Barclay called to him, "Is that headlight
No. 2?" And when the man affirmed Barclay's theory, he asked, "How
long does it take it to get down here?"

"Oh, she comes a-humming," replied the man. "If she doesn't jump the
track, she'll be down in eight minutes."

Inside the car Barclay heard a watch snap, and knew that Lycurgus
Mason didn't believe anything of the kind and proposed to get at the
facts. So Barclay sat down on the platform; but his mind went back to
the old days, and the ride through the woods along the Sycamore that
Sunday night in July came to him, with all its fragrance and stillness
and sweetness. He recalled that they came into the prairie just as the
meadow-lark was crying its last plaintive twilight trill, and the
western sky was glowing with a rim of gold upon the tips of the
clouds. The beauty of the prairie and the sky and the calm of the
evening entered into their hearts, and they were silent. Then they
left the prairie and went into the woods again, on the river road. And
before they came out of that road into the upland, Fate turned a screw
that changed the lives of all of them. For in a turn of the road, in a
deep cut made by a ravine, Gabriel Carnine, making the last stand for
Minneola, stepped into the path and took the horses by the bridles.
The shock that John felt that night when he realized what had happened
came back even across the years. And as the headlight far up in the
mountain above the desert slipped into a tunnel, though it flashed out
again in a few seconds, while it was gone, all the details of the
kidnapping of the young people in the buggy hurried across his mind.
Even the old anxiety that he felt lest Sycamore Ridge would think him