possessed of some information respecting Susy's relations, either from
the young girl's own confidences or from Jim's personal knowledge of the
old frontier families. From a sense of loyalty to Susy and Mrs. Peyton,
he had never alluded to the subject before him, but since the young
girl's own indiscretion had made it a matter of common report, however
distasteful it was to his own feelings, he felt he could not plead the
sense of delicacy for her. He had great hopes in what he had always
believed was only her exaggeration of fact as well as feeling. And he
had an instinctive reliance on her fellow poseur's ability to detect it.
A few days later, when he found he could safely leave the rancho alone,
he rode to Fair Plains.
The floods were out along the turnpike road, and even seemed to have
increased since his last journey. The face of the landscape had changed
again. One of the lower terraces had become a wild mere of sedge and
reeds. The dry and dusty bed of a forgotten brook had reappeared, a
full-banked river, crossing the turnpike and compelling a long detour
before the traveler could ford it. But as he approached the Hopkins
farm and the opposite clearing and cabin of Jim Hooker, he was quite
unprepared for a still more remarkable transformation. The cabin, a
three-roomed structure, and its cattle-shed had entirely disappeared!
There were no traces or signs of inundation. The land lay on a gentle
acclivity above the farm and secure from the effects of the flood, and
a part of the ploughed and cleared land around the site of the cabin
showed no evidence of overflow on its black, upturned soil. But
the house was gone! Only a few timbers too heavy to be removed,
the blighting erasions of a few months of occupation, and the dull,
blackened area of the site itself were to be seen. The fence alone was
intact.
Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished. Scarcely two weeks
had elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof with
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