She declined to discuss it. She did what she had not done
before that day--went forth in search of Kate Sanders. Aunt Janet was
astonished that her niece should wish to send food to that--that
trollop. What would she have thought could she have heard what passed
a few moments later? In the dusk and the gloaming Kate Sanders was in
conversation on the side veranda with a tall sergeant of her father's
troop. "Ask her?" Kate was saying. "Of course I'll ask her. Why, here
she comes now!" Will it be believed that Sergeant Shannon wished Miss
Angela's permission to "take Punch out for a little exercise," a thing
he had never ventured to ask before, and that Angela Wren eagerly
said, "Yes." Poor Shannon! He did not know that night how soon he
would be borrowing a horse on his own account, nor that two brave
girls would nearly cry their eyes out over it, when they were barely
on speaking terms.
Of him there came sad news but the day after his crack-brained,
Quixotic essay. Infatuated with Elise, and believing in her promise to
marry him, he had placed his savings in her hands, even as had Downs
and Carmody. He had heard the story of her visiting Blakely by night,
and scouted it. He heard, in a maze of astonishment, that she was
being sent to Prescott under guard for delivery to the civil
authorities, and taking the first horse he could lay hands on, he
galloped in chase.
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