Mrs. Smith; and in yours, Mrs. Goodman, and in yours, Mr. Badman; maybe it is upon the sea, or in the woods, or among the noises of some great city--but it is That Day. And no other day of all the thousands that have come to you is like it. Why should he remember the ugly farm-yard, the hard faces of the men, the straw-covered frame they called a barn, and the unpainted house? All these things passed by him unrecorded, as did the miserable fare of the table, the hard bed at night, and the worry that must have gnawed at his nerves to know that perhaps the town was thinking him false to it, or that his mother, guessing the truth, was in pain with terror, or to feel that a rescuing party coming at the wrong time would bring on a fight in which the girls would be killed. Only the picture of Jane Mason, fine and lithe and strong, with the pink cheeks of twenty, and the soft curves of childhood still playing about her chin and throat as he saw it from the ground at her feet,--that picture was etched into his heart, and with it the recollection of her eyes when she said, "John,--you don't think I--I knew of this--beforehand, do you?" Just that sentence--those were the only words left in his memory of a day's happiness. And he never heard a locust whirring in a tree that it did not bring back the memory of the spreading tree and the touch--the soft, quick, shy touch of her fingers in his hair, and the fire that was in her eyes. It was in the dusk of Tuesday evening that Jake Dolan's dog came into the yard where the captives were, and Jake disowned him, and joined the men who stoned the faithful creature out to the main road. But the prisoners knew that their rescuers would follow the dog, so at supper the three men from the Ridge sat together on a bench at the table while Mrs. Carnine and the girls waited on the men--after the fashion of country places in those days. Dolan managed to say under his breath to Barclay, "It's all right--but the girls must stay in the house to-night." And John knew that if he and Bob escaped with horses before ten o'clock, they could reach the Ridge in time to sign the levy before midnight. Darkness fell at eight, and a screech-owl in the wood complained to the night. Dolan rose and stretched and yawned, and then began to talk of going to bed, and Gabriel Carnine, whose turn it was to sleep because he had been up two nights, shuffled off to the straw-covered stable to lie down with the Texan who was his bunk mate, leaving half a dozen men to guard the prisoners. An hour later the screech-owl in the wood murmured again, this time much closer, and Dolan rose and took off his hat and threw it in the straw beside him. He was looking at the time anxiously toward the wood. But the next moment from behind the barn in the opposite direction something attracted them. It was a glare of light, and the guards noticed it at the same time. A last year's straw stack next to the barn was afire. Jane Mason was standing in the back door of the house, and in the hurried blur of moving events John divined that she had slipped out and fired the stack. In an instant there was confusion. The men were on their feet. They must fight fire, or the barn would go. Dolan ran with the men to the straw stack. "We'll help you," he cried. "I'll