"That may be true, Miss Noreen. I can only tell you what little I know. Your father might have been deceived; drawn into a trap. He was there apparently by appointment to confer with a man known to him as Taylor. Who Taylor really was I can not say—but he was an enemy, not a friend, of Major Harwood. I do not insist that the fellow was Ned Cowan, but I am sure he belonged to the gang. We trailed him nearly to New River, and had gone into camp amid the mountains when the Cowans attacked us. In my judgment the killing of your father, and the raid on this house tonight, form part of the same plan."
I do not think she was crying, although her face was buried in her hands. I turned my eyes away, down through the scuttle hole, but nothing moved along the hall below. The house seemed absolutely deserted, but the lamp continued to burn, and yet, even as I felt the strangeness of such intense silence, a door slammed somewhere in the distance, and a gruff voice spoke.
