The girl stole quietly into the toll-house after her lover had ridden away toward the misty hills. She found her mother still sleeping soundly in her chair, quite oblivious of surroundings, and little dreaming that the secret the Squire had urged her to keep so securely had reached a third pair of ears already in its swift journeyings.

Catching up her sewing again, which she had quickly dropped on the floor in her eagerness to see the belated rider, Sally began to sew away industriously to make up for lost time, while her thoughts flew a good deal faster than her needle.

Her surcharged mind was now happily relieved of a portion of its burden of fears. There was no longer any danger threatening her sweetheart, so far as the present intended raid was concerned, and possibly this itself would fail of fruition.

Soon after ten o'clock the sheriff and a posse of armed men appeared.

"You keep late hours, Miss Sally," he said when she and her mother came out to receive them. "I expected to find you both asleep."

"Not when we are expecting company," the girl answered with a laugh that was somewhat forced; "that wouldn't be good manners, you know."

"It's no use to go to bed," insisted Mrs. Brown. "I couldn't sleep a wink, not if my life depended on it, that I couldn't." Sally smiled faintly, thinking of the recent long nap her mother had taken, and of the warning that had been given, quite unknown to the sleeper, thanks to this period of oblivion.

"I do hope none of you will get hurt!" cried the girl in deep concern. "It seems dreadful to think that perhaps before morning a very battle may be fought right around this quiet spot."

"Don't be alarmed," the sheriff insisted. "I look for little trouble or bloodshed either."

"No more do I," thought the pretty toll-taker, with a secret satisfaction she admirably concealed.

"I expect to take the rascals so completely by surprise they will have a chance to make but little resistance," the officer continued reassuringly, for the girl's apparent fear appealed to him. "Perhaps we may be able to capture the whole band without loss of a single man."

A feeling almost bordering on resignation had gradually supplanted the disturbed condition of Mrs. Brown's mind since her daughter's reassuring confession that the Squire had placed a shelter at their disposal, in case the raiders deprived them of the one they now had. She began to feel that the threatened calamity might, after all, take on the characteristics of a disguised blessing, since it would help to bring to a climax a state of affairs she had long striven, though unsuccessfully, to mold to her purpose, and that through the raiders the Squire might also manage to get him a wife, which, up to the present moment at least had proven a most elusive quantity.

With the coming of the posse to guard the gate, Mrs. Brown's spirits took on almost a jubilant turn, for though the raiders might fail in their present venture, they would ultimately succeed in the destruction of the New Pike gate, and its doom would probably not be far distant, in spite of officers or guard, while the price of its downfall would be the speedy realization of the mother's fondest dreams concerning her daughter's future.

"We might just as well lay down on the outside of the bed, dressed as we are," said Mrs. Brown, as she led the way into the house, after the men had been placed on guard. "It's no use stayin' up, though, of course, I don't expect to close my eyes the entire night, for nobody can tell what may take place before mornin'."

"The raiders may not come, after all," ventured Sally, hoping to allay her mother's evident fears, "though, as you say, it's just as well to look presentable, in case we should be turned out of the house and home in the middle of the night." She gave a covert glance in the small looking glass on the tall dresser as she spoke.

"There's at least one that will not be captured tonight, whether he is a raider, or whether he isn't, and the Squire may find that his traps are not as carefully set as he thinks," said the girl to herself as she blew out the light, and lay down.

The incidents of the past few days came crowding confusedly through her brain as she lay thinking over the many entanglements that seemed tightening their meshes closer and closer about her.

As the night grew on apace, a suggestive sound by her side proclaimed that her mother had fallen asleep, despite all predictions of a watchful vigil, and as the girl lay and listened to the droning monotone, it finally lulled her into forgetfulness and slumber.

Darkness and silence hovered over the New Pike gate, and while its inmates slept on through threatened danger, others were yet awake and watchful along the opposite side of the road, their alert and crouching figures hidden in the gloom of the sheltering stone wall as the guard impatiently awaited the coming of the raiders.