Hours dragged by--dark hours for Ellen Jorth lying prostrate beside the tree, hiding the blue sky and golden sunlight from her eyes.

At length the lethargy of despair, the black dull misery wore away; and she gradually returned to a condition of coherent thought.
What had she learned?
Sight of the black horse grazing near seemed to prompt the trenchant replies.

Spades belonged to Jean Isbel.

He had been stolen by her father or by one of her father's accomplices.
Isbel's vaunted cunning as a tracker had been no idle boast.

Her father was a horse thief, a rustler, a sheepman only as a blind, a consort of Daggs, leader of the Hash Knife Gang.