The gate clashed open again just as Janice's weakened grasp slipped from Mrs. Scattergood's arm and she staggered away from the excited, panting old woman. The girl would have fallen, save that the young man who rushed in at the gate, having seen the danger in season, caught her in his arms.

The girl's eyelids fluttered; her lips remained open; the pallor of her face was terrifying.

"What's happened?" demanded the newcomer. "What have you done to her, Mrs. Scattergood?"

"Me? I ain't done nothing—not a thing!" denied the woman shrilly.

"You said something to her, then?"

"Wal! What if I did? She'd oughter hev been told before."

"You told her?"

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" moaned Janice.

"You mind your own business, Frank Bowman! You're one o' them foolish folk, too, that's allus tryin' ter hide the trewth 'cause it's bitter. Sure 'tis bitter; 'twas meant ter be. An' these namby-pamby people in this world that can't stand the trewth to be told to 'em——"

Mrs. Scattergood overlooked the plain fact that the reason she had lost her temper and told this secret to Janice Day was because the girl had told her a few truths. But Frank Bowman was not listening to the old woman's tirade. Janice had not lost consciousness. Only for a moment did she sag helplessly on the young civil engineer's arm.

Then he led her out at the gate and to her car. He aided Janice into the seat, but slipped behind the steering wheel himself and touched the self-starter.

Mrs. Scattergood stared after them, slowly retreating the while toward the house. Her face did not display its customary smirk of complacency. That bit of gossip that had trembled on the tip of her tongue for days, and which she had been begged not to reveal to Janice, had at length been spoken. Her mind should have been relieved; but Mrs. Scattergood was not satisfied. There was something wrong. All she could see as she stumbled into the house was the stricken face of the young girl who had so often done her a friendly kindness, whose smile had been, after all, a cheering sight to her aging vision, whose whole existence here in Polktown seemed to be for the express purpose of making other people happy. It was with a sort of mental shock that Mrs. Scattergood suddenly discovered she, too, had been blessed and comforted by the spirit of Janice Day.

The car swept up the hill and over its crown, as the old woman retired into her cottage. Frank Bowman had not said a word. He twisted the steering wheel a trifle and they shot around the Town House front and into the Upper Middletown road.

"Oh, Frank! Is it true? It is true!" the girl finally faltered.

"Yes. Your father is wounded. We do not know how badly. No news has come out of the district since the first report. He is a prisoner of the insurrectos at the mine."

"There has been another battle?"

"Yes. Another uprising against the government. It's an awful thing——"

"Is there no hope? Oh, Frank! there must be!"

"Of course there is hope," he cried. "He's no worse off than he has been several times before."

"But you say he is shot!"

"Well—yes. That is the report."

"If one part of the report is true, why not the other?" said the girl, her keenness of wit thus displayed.

"But the wound may not be bad. We don't know that it is. Oh! hang that old woman, anyway! Why did she tell you?"

"Because she was angry with me," sighed Janice.

"Well——"

"And you must all think father very badly hurt or you would not have hid it from me—for how long?"

He told her. "But we don't really know anything about it. Nelson is raising heaven and earth for news. There is a good deal of excitement along the Border, they say——"

"Yes. I read that. Oh! how have you all managed to hide it from me for so long? I felt—Oh, you had no right!"

"We did what we hoped was for the best," Frank said gently.

"Oh, I suppose you did. But daddy wounded! I must go to him, Frank."

"Oh no, my dear girl. That would not be possible. Nobody can get beyond San Cristoval, and no American is allowed to cross the Border. It is not safe to enter Mexico now on any pretext. Those greasers hate us worse than poison."

Janice tried to control herself. She had not wept; this dry-eyed suffering was a deal worse for the girl, however, than would have been a passion of tears.

"Where—where are you taking me?" she asked suddenly, laying her hand on Frank's arm.

"Why, weren't you on your way to the seminary?"

"But I can't go there now," she said. "Not to-day."

"Here's Elder Concannon's place, right ahead. We can turn there if you like."

At the moment the elder himself appeared from one of the barns, and seeing the car and recognizing its occupants he came out to the great gate to hail them.

"Aren't going right by without stopping, are ye?" he said genially.

Frank Bowman quite involuntarily brought the car to a stop. The moment he did so the elder saw Janice's face.

"What's the matter?" he asked quickly. "Has she been told? Does she know?"

Frank nodded and the old man quickly came around to the girl's side.

"My dear," he said huskily. "My dear, brave girl! You've got something to trouble you now for a fac'. It's the waiting to hear news—to get the exact fac's—that is going to be hardest. Your friends have saved you some of that."

"Oh, I know! I know they thought they were doing it for the best," wailed Janice. "But daddy! He needs me!"

"It may not be anywhere near so bad as it might be, or as you think it is," Frank put in.

"Quite true—quite true," said the elder very gently for him. "I know just how hard 'tis to wait, Janice. I calculate those that wait at home suffer more than those that actually see battle, murder, and sudden death. But your father, Janice, may be already on his way home. You can't tell. You got to have patience."

"But I ought to go to him, Elder Concannon," she said.

"Not to be thought of! Not to be thought of!" he repeated. "What? A gal like you going clear down there to Mexico? Preposterous!"

That is what Uncle Jason said later, when his niece broached the subject to him. Indeed, Janice found nobody would listen to her or agree to such a project. A girl to go down to the Border, especially in these uncertain times? They scoffed at her!

It was said that the parties of rebels and commandoes of the Mexican army were hovering along the Rio Grande, ready to swoop like hawks upon unprotected Americans. The thin line of United States soldiers was strung along the desert country, watchfully waiting, policing the district as best they could. But they could not protect Americans who went over the line.

That evening an informal council of war was held in the Day sitting room. Frank Bowman was there as well as Nelson Haley. Frank was a very busy young man, for the branch railroad was completed, and, having built it, he was to act as supervisor of the branch until the directors decided upon another incumbent for the office. Besides, Frank had a deep interest in the pretty daughter of Vice President Harrison of the V. C. Road, and therefore he was not seen about Polktown so often in his free hours as formerly. He had come this evening, however, with Nelson, and the two young men, as well as the older heads, were unalterably opposed to Janice Day's desire to attempt going to the Border.

"Why, you couldn't get across the Rio Grande," Frank said decisively. "Trains are not running with any degree of regularity on any road in Northern Mexico. The International is at a standstill, I am told—tracks torn up in places and the American engineers chased out. And this San Cristoval place is on a branch of the International."

Nelson asked a question about the best route to be followed in getting to that point on the Border opposite to San Cristoval, and Frank told them, clearly and concisely.

"But even then you are several hundred miles from the Companos District," he pursued. "Chihuahua is a big state. Texas itself is only to be compared to it for size. A ranching country, slopes up to the Sierras. It is in the foothills of the Sierras that the Alderdice Mine is situated. Why, Janice! you are actually just as near to your father—at least news of him—here in Polktown as you would be down there on the Border, for there all wires and other lines of communication are cut. There is no safe way of getting beyond the Rio Grande at the present time."

"Jefers-pelters!" ejaculated Walky Dexter, who was present at the conference. "Broxton Day might's well be in Chiny."

"You are right, Walky, for once," declared Uncle Jason. "I wish he'd never gone down to that heathenish country."

Aunt 'Mira was in tears—had been so since Janice had driven home in her car with the civil engineer that morning. She had controlled herself after a fashion, these several days for Janice's sake; now she was making up for lost time, so Marty declared, and wept with abandon.

"Why, she can't go down there inter Mexico," wailed the woman. "No gal like her can't. 'Tain't fit. Why, them women down there don't even wear decent clo'es! I've seen pitchers of 'em with nothin' on but basket-work stuff around their waists an' anklets. It's disgraceful!"

"Oh, cricky, Ma!" chortled Marty. "You are gittin' things mixed for sure. That's the Hawaiian Islands you're thinkin' of. Hula-hula girls. Oh my!"

"Wal, 'tis jest as bad in Mexico, I haven't a doubt," said the fleshy woman, tossing her head. "'Tis no place for a decent gal like our Janice."

"Ye air jest as right as rain, Miz' Day," agreed Walky.

"Hi tunket!" said the boy, the only person who did not attempt to discourage Janice in her thought of starting at once for the Border. "Hi tunket! wouldn't it be dandy to go down there among those greasers and bring Uncle Brocky home? I'd go with you, Janice, in a minute!"

"Huh!" gruffly said his father, "you'd be a lot of use, you would."

"I bet I would be, so now!" said the boy. "If Janice goes, I'm going. Ain't I got some interest in Uncle Brocky, I'd like to know?"

"You show your int'rest in this sittin' room fire, son," observed Mr. Day. "Go out and get an armful of chunks. Fire's goin' out on us."

"That's all right," growled Marty. "If Janice goes, I'm goin'—that's all there is about it."

But nobody considered for a moment that Janice could, should, or would go! It seemed positively ridiculous to the minds of all her friends that the girl should even contemplate such a thing.

"But what shall I do?" she cried.

"Wait. That's all any of us can do, Janice," Nelson said tenderly. "It is terrible to be inactive at such a time, I know. But you could do nothing down there on the Border that you cannot do here in Polktown."

"I'd be nearer to daddy," she said, with a sob.

"Ye don't know that," put in Uncle Jason. "We don't none of us know where Broxton Day is right now. Why! he might open that door yonder and walk in here any moment. How d'we know?"

But Janice found little comfort in the thought. Indeed, she scarcely heard what her uncle said. She could think of little but her father's perilous situation, wounded and a prisoner among people whom she believed to be as bloodthirsty as savages.

Uncle Jason's financial difficulties were nothing to compare to this. Little Lottie Drugg's state of mind slipped entirely out of Janice Day's memory.

The only serious thing in the world to her now was her father's peril and her inability to get to him to lend him the comfort of her presence.