the letter to him until the last thing. Good-by."

The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped
up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking,
quietly let himself out by the front door.

When he drove into the high road again, however, an overlooked
possibility threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his amiable
intentions regarding Low. The hotel was at the further end of the
settlement towards the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached
it he was recalled to himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels rapidly
approaching from the direction of the Excelsior turnpike. Wynn made no
doubt it was the sheriff and Brace. To avoid recognition at that moment,
he whipped up his horse, intending to keep the lead until he could turn
into the first cross-road. But the coming travelers had the fleetest
horse, and finding it impossible to distance them he drove close to the
ditch, pulling up suddenly as the strange vehicle was abreast of him,
and forcing them to pass him at full speed, with the result already
chronicled. When they had vanished in the darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a
heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness and universal benevolence,
wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel he had already passed. To
pull up at the veranda with a stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the
deserted bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the landlord's door,
and commit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dresssed and
half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn, and part of his
amiable plans that morning.

"Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother Carter, and
about as much again to prop open your eyes," he said, dragging Carter
before the bar, "and glasses round for as many of the boys as are up