the stern face, giving a glimpse of a heart still warm beneath that
steely cold. Behind it, too, there was something fateful,
something deadly.

Helen knew, though the borderman spoke not, that somewhere among the
grasses of the broad plains, or on the moss of the wooded hills, lay
dead the perpetrators of this outrage, their still faces bearing the
ghastly stamp of Deathwind.




CHAPTER VI

Happier days than she had hoped for, dawned upon Helen after the first
touch of border sorrow. Mabel Lane did not die. Helen and Betty nursed
the stricken girl tenderly, weeping for very joy when signs of
improvement appeared. She had remained silent for several days, always
with that haunting fear in her eyes, and then gradually came a change.
Tender care and nursing had due effect in banishing the dark shadow.
One morning after a long sleep she awakened with a bright smile, and
from that time her improvement was rapid.

Helen wanted Mabel to live with her. The girl's position was pitiable.
Homeless, fatherless, with not a relative on the border, yet so brave,
so patient that she aroused all the sympathy in Helen's breast.
Village gossip was in substance, that Mabel had given her love to a
young frontiersman, by name Alex Bennet, who had an affection for her,
so it was said, but as yet had made no choice between her and the
other lasses of the settlement. What effect Mabel's terrible