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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Highgrader, by William MacLeod Raine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Highgrader
+
+Author: William MacLeod Raine
+
+Illustrator: D. C. Hutchison
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2007 [EBook #22583]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIGHGRADER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: KILMENY'S ALERT EYES SWEPT AGAIN AND AGAIN THE TRAIL
+LEADING UP THE GULCH. HE DID NOT INTEND TO BE CAUGHT NAPPING BY THE
+OFFICERS. Frontispiece (p. 67)]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE HIGHGRADER
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE
+
+Author of "Wyoming," "Ridgway of Montana," "Bucky O'Connor," "A Texas
+Ranger," "Mavericks," "Brand Blotters," "Crooked Trails and Straight,"
+"The Vision Splendid," "The Pirate of Panama," "A Daughter of the Dons,"
+Etc.
+
+Illustrations By
+D. C. HUTCHISON
+
+G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
+Publishers      New York
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
+
+The Highgrader
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+
+         I. The Campers                                         11
+        II. Mr. Verinder Complains                              18
+       III. Night Fishing                                       28
+        IV. Fugitives From Justice                              44
+         V. "I'm Here, Neighbor"                                56
+        VI. Lord Farquhar Gives Moya A Hint                     71
+       VII. Moya's Highwayman                                   84
+      VIII. The Bad Penny Again                                102
+        IX. "An Out and Out Rotter"                            113
+         X. Old Friends                                        123
+        XI. A Blizzard                                         141
+       XII. Out of the Storm a Man                             157
+      XIII. Shot To the Core With Sunlight                     170
+       XIV. "Prove It!... Prove It!"                           180
+        XV. A Highgrader--In Principle                         189
+       XVI. One Maid--Two Men                                  201
+      XVII. A Warning                                          218
+     XVIII. Two Ambushes                                       237
+       XIX. Mr. Verinder Is Treated To A Surprise              243
+        XX. Colter Takes A Hand                                250
+       XXI. Spirit Rapping?                                    264
+      XXII. The Acid Test                                      274
+     XXIII. Captain Kilmeny Retires                            284
+      XXIV. Two In A Bucket                                    291
+       XXV. Homing Hearts                                      309
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+                                                              PAGE
+
+Kilmeny's alert eyes swept again and again the trail
+leading up the gulch. He did not intend to be caught
+napping by the officers      _Frontispiece_                     67
+
+"He's hooked pretty fast. Take your time about getting
+him into your net. These big fellows are likely to squirm
+away"                                                           33
+
+They rode through a world shot to the core with sunlight.
+The snow sparkled and gleamed with it                          177
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+THE HIGHGRADER
+
+PRELUDE
+
+
+A young idealist, _aetat_ four, was selling stars to put in the sky. She
+had cut them with her own scissors out of red tissue paper, so that she
+was able to give a guarantee.
+
+"But you'll have to get the ladder out of our bedroom to put 'em up
+wiv," she told purchasers honestly.
+
+The child was a wild dark creature, slim and elfish, with a queer little
+smile that flashed sudden as an April sun.
+
+It was evening, on the promenade deck of an ocean liner. The sea was
+like glass and the swell hardly perceptible. Land was in sight, a vague
+uneven line rising mist-like on the horizon. Before morning the
+_Victorian_ would be running up the St. Lawrence. Even for the most
+squeamish the discomforts of the voyage lay behind. A pleasant good
+fellowship was in the air. In some it took the form of an idle
+contentment, a vague regret that ties newly formed must so soon be
+broken. In others it found an expression more buoyant. Merry voices of
+shuffleboard players drifted forward. Young couples paced the deck and
+leaned over the rail to watch the phosphorescent glow. The open windows
+of the smoking-room gave forth the tinkle of glasses and the low rattle
+of chips. All sounds blended into a mellow harmony.
+
+"What's your price on a whole constellation with a lovers' moon thrown
+in?" inquired a young man lounging in a deck chair.
+
+The vendor of stars looked at him in her direct serious fashion. "I fink
+I tan't sell you all 'at, but I'll make you a moon to go wiv the
+stars--not a weally twuly one, jus' a make-believe moon," she added in a
+whisper.
+
+An irritated voice made itself heard. "Steward, have you seen that child
+anywhere? The naughty little brat has run away again--and I left her
+only a minute."
+
+The dealer in celestial supplies came to earth.
+
+"I'm goin' to be smacked," she announced with grave conviction.
+
+An unvoiced conspiracy formed itself instantly in her behalf. A lady in
+a steamer chair gathered the child under the shelter of her rug. An
+eight-year-old youngster knotted his fists valiantly. The young man who
+had priced a constellation considered the chances of a cutting-out
+expedition.
+
+"She should have been in bed long ago. I just stepped out to speak to
+our room steward and when I came back she was gone," the annoyed
+governess was explaining.
+
+Discovery was imminent. The victim prepared herself for the worst.
+
+"I don't care," she protested to her protector. "It's ever so nicer to
+stay up, an' if it wasn't runnin' away it would be somefing else."
+
+At this bit of philosophy the lounger chuckled, rose swiftly, and
+intercepted the dragon.
+
+"When do I get that walk you promised me, Miss Lupton? What's the matter
+with right now?"
+
+The governess was surprised, since it was the first she had heard of any
+walk. Flattered she was, but still faithful to duty.
+
+"I'm looking for Moya. She knows she must always go to her room after
+tea and stay there. The naughty child ran away."
+
+"She's all right. I saw her snuggled under a rug with Mrs. Curtis not
+two minutes ago. Just a turn or two in this lovely night."
+
+Drawn by the magnet of his manhood, Moya slipped into the chair beside
+the eight-year-old.
+
+"I'd kick her darned shins if she spanked me," boasted he of the eight
+years.
+
+Moya admired his courage tremendously. Her dark eyes followed the
+retreating figure of her governess. "I'm 'fraid."
+
+"Hm! Bet I wouldn't be. Course, you're only a girl."
+
+His companion pleaded guilty with a sigh and slipped her hand into his
+beneath the steamer rug.
+
+"It's howwid to be a dirl," she confided.
+
+"Bet I wouldn't be one."
+
+"You talk so funny."
+
+"Don't either. I'm a Namerican. Tha's how we all talk."
+
+"I'm Irish. Mith Lupton says 'at's why I'm so naughty," the sinner
+confessed complacently.
+
+Confidences were exchanged. Moya explained that she was a norphan and
+had nobody but a man called Guardy, and he was not her very own. She
+lived in Sussex and had a Shetland pony. Mith Lupton was horrid and was
+always smacking her. When she said her prayers she always said in soft
+to herself, "But pleathe, God, don't bless Mith Lupton." They were
+taking a sea voyage for Moya's health, and she had been seasick just the
+teentiest weentiest bit. Jack on his part could proudly affirm that he
+had not missed a meal. He lived in Colorado on a ranch with his father,
+who had just taken him to England and Ireland to visit his folks. He
+didn't like England one little bit, and he had told his cousin Ned so
+and they had had a fight. As he was proceeding to tell details Miss
+Lupton returned from her stroll.
+
+She brought Moya to her feet with a jerk. "My goodness! Who will you
+pick up next? Now walk along to your room, missie."
+
+"Yes, Mith Lupton."
+
+"Haven't I told you not to talk to strangers?"
+
+"He isn't stwanger. He's Jack," announced Moya stanchly.
+
+"I'll teach you to run away as soon as my back is turned. You should
+have been in bed an hour ago."
+
+"I tan't unbutton myself."
+
+"A likely reason. Move along, now."
+
+Having been remiss in her duty, Miss Lupton was salving her conscience
+by being extra severe now. She hurried her charge away.
+
+Suddenly Moya stopped. "Pleathe, my han'erchif."
+
+"Have you lost it? Where is it?"
+
+"I had it in the chair."
+
+"Then run back and get it."
+
+Moya's thin white legs flashed along the deck. Like a small hurricane
+she descended upon the boy. Her arms went around his neck and for an
+instant he was smothered in her embrace, dark ringlets flying about his
+fair head.
+
+"Dood-night, Jack."
+
+A kiss fell helter-skelter on his cheek and she was gone, tugging a
+little handkerchief from her pocket as she ran.
+
+The boy did not see her again. Before she was up he and his father left
+the boat at Quebec. Jack wondered whether she had been smacked, after
+all. Once or twice during the day he thought of her, but the excitement
+of new sights effaced from his mind the first romance his life had
+known.
+
+But for nearly a week Moya added a codicil silently to her prayer. "And,
+God, pleathe bless Jack."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAMPERS
+
+
+Inside the cabin a man was baking biscuits and singing joyously, "It's a
+Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Outside, another whistled softly to
+himself while he arranged his fishing tackle. From his book he had
+selected three flies and was attaching them to the leader. Nearest the
+rod he put a royal coachman, next to it a blue quill, and at the end a
+ginger quill.
+
+The cook, having put his biscuits in the oven, filled the doorway. He
+was a big, strong-set man, with a face of leather. Rolled-up sleeves
+showed knotted brown arms white to the wrists with flour. His eyes were
+hard and steady, but from the corners of them innumerable little
+wrinkles fell away and crinkled at times to mirth.
+
+"First call to dinner in the dining-car," he boomed out in a heavy bass.
+
+Two men lounging under a cottonwood beside the river showed signs of
+life. One of them was scarcely more than a boy, perhaps twenty, a
+pleasant amiable youth with a weak chin and eyes that held no steel.
+His companion was nearer forty than thirty, a hard-faced citizen who
+chewed tobacco and said little.
+
+"Where you going to fish to-night, Crumbs?" the cook asked of the man
+busy with the tackle.
+
+"Think I'll try up the river, Colter--start in above the Narrows and
+work down, mebbe. Where you going?"
+
+"Me for the Meadows. I'm after the big fellows. Going to hang the Indian
+sign on them with a silver doctor and a Jock Scott. The kid here got his
+three-pounder on a Jock Scott."
+
+The man who had been called Crumbs put his rod against the side of the
+house and washed his hands in a tin pan resting on a stump. He was a
+slender young fellow with lean, muscular shoulders and the bloom of many
+desert suns on his cheeks and neck.
+
+"Going to try a Jock Scott myself after it gets dark."
+
+The boy who had come up from the river's bank grinned. "Now I've shown
+you lads how to do it you'll all be catching whales."
+
+"Once is a happenstance, twice makes a habit. Do it again, Curly, and
+we'll hail you king of the river," Colter promised, bringing to the
+table around which they were seating themselves a frying pan full of
+trout done to a crisp brown. "Get the coffee, Mosby. There's beer in the
+icebox, kid."
+
+They ate in their shirtsleeves, camp fashion, on an oil cloth scarred
+with the marks left by many hot dishes. They brought to dinner the
+appetites of outdoors men who had whipped for hours a turbid stream
+under an August sun. Their talk was strong and crisp, after the fashion
+of the mining West. It could not be printed without editing, yet in that
+atmosphere it was without offense. There is a time for all things, even
+for the elemental talk of frontiersmen on a holiday.
+
+Dinner finished, the fishermen lolled on the grass and smoked.
+
+A man cantered out of the patch of woods above and drew up at the cabin,
+disposing himself for leisurely gossip.
+
+"Evening, gentlemen. Heard the latest?" He drew a match across his chaps
+and lit the cigarette he had rolled.
+
+"We'll know after you've told us what it is," Colter suggested.
+
+"The Gunnison country ce'tainly is being honored, boys. A party of
+effete Britishers are staying at the Lodge. Got in last night. I seen
+them when they got off the train--me lud and me lady, three young ladies
+that grade up A1, a Johnnie boy with an eyeglass, and another lad who
+looks like one man from the ground up. Also, and moreover, there's a
+cook, a hawss wrangler, a hired girl to button the ladies up the back,
+and a valley chap to say 'Yes, sir, coming, sir,' to the dude."
+
+"You got it all down like a book, Steve," grinned Curly.
+
+"Any names?" asked Colter.
+
+"Names to burn," returned the native. "A whole herd of names, honest to
+God. Most any of 'em has five or six, the way the Denver _Post_ tells
+it. Me, I can't keep mind of so many fancy brands. I'll give you the A B
+C of it. The old parties are Lord James and Lady Jim Farquhar, leastways
+I heard one of the young ladies call her Lady Jim. The dude has Verinder
+burnt on about eight trunks, s'elp me. Then there's a Miss Dwight and a
+Miss Joyce Seldon--and, oh, yes! a Captain Kilmeny, and an Honorable
+Miss Kilmeny, by ginger."
+
+Colter flashed a quick look at Crumbs. A change had come over that young
+man's face. His blue eyes had grown hard and frosty.
+
+"It's a plumb waste of money to take a newspaper when you're around,
+Steve," drawled Colter, in amiable derision. "Happen to notice the color
+of the ladies' eyes?"
+
+The garrulous cowpuncher was on the spot once more. "Sure, I did,
+leastways one of them. I want to tell you lads that Miss Joyce Seldon is
+the prettiest skirt that ever hit this neck of the woods--and her eyes,
+say, they're like pansies, soft and deep and kinder velvety."
+
+The fishermen shouted. Their mirth was hearty and uncontained.
+
+"Go to it, Steve. Tell us some more," they demanded joyously.
+
+Crumbs, generally the leader in all the camp fun, had not joined in the
+laughter. He had been drawing on his waders and buckling on his creel.
+Now he slipped the loop of the landing net over his head.
+
+"We want a full bill of particulars, Steve. You go back and size up the
+eyes of the lady lord and the other female Britishers," ordered Curly
+gayly.
+
+"Go yore own self, kid. I ain't roundin' up trouble for no babe just out
+of the cradle," retorted the grinning rider. "What's yore hurry,
+Crumbs?"
+
+The young man addressed had started away but now turned. "No hurry, I
+reckon, but I'm going fishing."
+
+Steve chuckled. "You're headed in a bee line for Old Man Trouble. The
+Johnnie boy up at the Lodge is plumb sore on this outfit. Seems that you
+lads raised ructions last night and broken his sweet slumbers. He's got
+the kick of a government mule coming. Why can't you wild Injuns behave
+proper?"
+
+"We only gave Curly a chapping because he let the flapjacks burn,"
+returned Crumbs with a smile. "You see, he's come of age most, Curly
+has. He'd ought to be responsible now, but he ain't. So we gave him what
+was coming to him."
+
+"Well, you explain that to Mr. Verinder if he sees you. He's sure on his
+hind laigs about it."
+
+"I expect he'll get over it in time," Crumbs said dryly. "Well, so-long,
+boys. Good fishing to-night."
+
+"Same to you," they called after him.
+
+"Some man, Crumbs," commented Steve.
+
+"He'll stand the acid," agreed Colter briefly.
+
+"What's his last name? I ain't heard you lads call him anything but
+Crumbs. I reckon that's a nickname."
+
+Curly answered the question of the cowpuncher. "His name 's
+Kilmeny--Jack Kilmeny. His folks used to live across the water. Maybe
+this Honorable Miss Kilmeny and her brother are some kin of his."
+
+"You don't say!"
+
+"Course I don't know about that. His dad came over here when he was a
+wild young colt. Got into some trouble at home, the way I heard it.
+Bought a ranch out here and married. His family was high moguls in
+England--or, maybe, it was Ireland. Anyhow, they didn't like Mrs.
+Kilmeny from the Bar Double C ranch. Ain't that the way of it, Colter?"
+
+The impassive gaze of the older man came back from the rushing river.
+"You know so much about it, Curly, I'll not butt in with any more
+misinformation," he answered with obvious sarcasm.
+
+Curly flushed. "I'd ought to know. Jack's father and mine were friends,
+so's he and me."
+
+"How come you to call him Crumbs?"
+
+"That's a joke, Steve. Jack's no ordinary rip-roaring, hell-raisin'
+miner. He knows what's what. That's why we call him Crumbs--because he's
+fine bred. Pun, see. Fine bred--crumbs. Get it?"
+
+"Sure I get it, kid. I ain't no Englishman. You don't need a two-by-four
+to pound a josh into my cocoanut," the rider remonstrated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MR. VERINDER COMPLAINS
+
+
+Jack Kilmeny followed the pathway which wound through the woods along
+the bank of the river. Occasionally he pushed through a thick growth of
+young willows or ducked beneath the top strand of a neglected wire
+fence.
+
+Beyond the trees lay a clearing. At the back of this, facing the river,
+was a large fishing lodge built of logs and finished artistically in
+rustic style. It was a two-story building spread over a good deal of
+ground space. A wide porch ran round the front and both sides. Upon the
+porch were a man in an armchair and a girl seated on the top step with
+her head against the corner post.
+
+A voice hailed Kilmeny. "I say, my man."
+
+The fisherman turned, discovered that he was the party addressed, and
+waited.
+
+"Come here, you!" The man in the armchair had taken the cigar from his
+mouth and was beckoning to him.
+
+"Meaning me?" inquired Kilmeny.
+
+"Of course I mean you. Who else could I mean?"
+
+The fisherman drew near. In his eyes sparkled a light that belied his
+acquiescence.
+
+"Do you belong to the party camped below?" inquired he of the rocking
+chair, one eyeglass fixed in the complacent face.
+
+The guilty man confessed.
+
+"Then I want to know what the deuce you meant by kicking up such an
+infernal row last night. I couldn't sleep a wink for hours--not for
+hours, dash it. It's an outrage--a beastly outrage. What!"
+
+The man with the monocle was smug with the self-satisfaction of his
+tribe. His thin hair was parted in the middle and a faint straw-colored
+mustache decorated his upper lip. Altogether, he might measure five feet
+five in his boots. The miner looked at him gravely. No faintest hint of
+humor came into the sea-blue eyes. They took in the dapper Britisher as
+if he had been a natural history specimen.
+
+"So kindly tell them not to do it again," Dobyans Verinder ordered in
+conclusion.
+
+"If you please, sir," added the young woman quietly.
+
+Kilmeny's steady gaze passed for the first time to her. He saw a slight
+dark girl with amazingly live eyes and a lift to the piquant chin that
+was arresting. His hat came off promptly.
+
+"We didn't know anybody was at the Lodge," he explained.
+
+"You wouldn't, of course," she nodded, and by way of explanation: "Lady
+Farquhar is rather nervous. Of course we don't want to interfere with
+your fun, but----"
+
+"There will be no more fireworks at night. One of the boys had a
+birthday and we were ventilating our enthusiasm. If we had known----"
+
+"Kindly make sure it doesn't happen again, my good fellow," cut in
+Verinder.
+
+Kilmeny looked at him, then back at the girl. The dapper little man had
+been weighed and found wanting. Henceforth, Verinder was not on the map.
+
+"Did you think we were wild Utes broke loose from the reservation? I
+reckon we were some noisy. When the boys get to going good they don't
+quite know when to stop."
+
+The eyes of the young woman sparkled. The fisherman thought he had never
+seen a face more vivid. Such charm as it held was too irregular for
+beauty, but the spirit that broke through interested by reason of its
+hint of freedom. She might be a caged bird, but her wings beat for the
+open spaces.
+
+"Were they going good last night?" she mocked prettily.
+
+"Not real good, ma'am. You see, we had no town to shoot up, so we just
+punctured the scenery. If we had known you were here----"
+
+"You would have come and shot us up," she charged gayly.
+
+Kilmeny laughed. "You're a good one, neighbor. But you don't need to
+worry." He let his eyes admire her lazily. "Young ladies are too seldom
+in this neck of the woods for the boys to hurt any. Give them a chance
+and they would be real good to you, ma'am."
+
+His audacity delighted Moya Dwight. "Do you think they would?"
+
+"In our own barbaric way, of course."
+
+"Do you ever scalp people?" she asked with innocent impudence.
+
+"It's a young country," he explained genially.
+
+"It has that reputation."
+
+"You've been reading stories about us," he charged. "Now we'll be on our
+good behavior just to show you."
+
+"Thank you--if it isn't too hard."
+
+"They're good boys, though they do forget it sometimes."
+
+"I'm glad they do. They wouldn't interest me if they were too good.
+What's the use of coming to Colorado if it is going to be as civilized
+as England?"
+
+Verinder, properly scandalized at this free give and take with a
+haphazard savage of the wilds, interrupted in the interest of
+propriety. "I'll not detain you any longer, my man. You may get at your
+fishing."
+
+The Westerner paid not the least attention to him. "My gracious, ma'am,
+we think we're a heap more civilized than England. We ain't got any
+militant suffragettes in this country--at least, I've never met up with
+any."
+
+"They're a sign of civilization," the young woman laughed. "They prove
+we're still alive, even if we are asleep."
+
+"We've got you beat there, then. All the women vote here. What's the
+matter with you staying and running for governor?"
+
+"Could I--really?" she beamed.
+
+"Really and truly. Trouble with us is that we're so civilized we bend
+over backward with it. You're going to find us mighty tame. The
+melodramatic romance of the West is mostly in storybooks. What there was
+of it has gone out with the cowpuncher."
+
+"What's a cowpuncher?"
+
+"He rides the range after cattle."
+
+"Oh--a cowboy. But aren't there any cowboys?"
+
+"They're getting seldom. The barb wire fence has put them out of
+business. Mostly they're working for the moving picture companies now,"
+he smiled.
+
+Mr. Verinder prefaced with a formal little cough a second attempt to
+drive away this very assured native. "As I was saying, Miss Dwight, I
+wouldn't mind going into Parliament, you know, if it weren't for the
+bally labor members. I'm rather strong on speaking--that sort of thing,
+you know. Used to be a dab at it. But I couldn't stand the bounders that
+get in nowadays. Really, I couldn't."
+
+"And I had so counted on the cowboys. I'm going to be disappointed, I
+think," Miss Dwight said to the Westerner quietly.
+
+Verinder had sense enough to know that he was being punished. He had
+tried to put the Westerner out of the picture and found himself
+eliminated instead. An angry flush rose to his cheeks.
+
+"That's the mistake you all make," Kilmeny told her. "The true romance
+of the West isn't in its clothes and its trappings."
+
+"Where is it?" she asked.
+
+"In its spirit--in the hope and the courage born of the wide plains and
+the clean hills--in its big democracy and its freedom from convention.
+The West is a condition of mind."
+
+Miss Dwight was surprised. She had not expected a philosophy of this
+nature from her chance barbarian. He had the hands of a working man,
+brown and sinewy but untorn; yet there was the mark of distinction in
+the lean head set so royally on splendid shoulders. His body, spare of
+flesh and narrow of flank, had the lithe grace of a panther. She had
+seen before that look of competence, of easy self-reliance. Some of the
+men of her class had it--Ned Kilmeny, for instance. But Ned was an
+officer in a fighting regiment which had seen much service. Where had
+this tanned fisherman won the manner that inheres only in a leader of
+men?
+
+"And how long does it take to belong to your West?" asked the young
+woman, with the inflection of derision.
+
+But her mockery was a fraud. In both voice and face was a vivid
+eagerness not to be missed.
+
+"Time hasn't a thing to do with it. Men live all their lives here and
+are never Westerners. Others are of us in a day. I think you would
+qualify early."
+
+She knew that she ought to snub his excursion into the personal, but she
+was by nature unconventional.
+
+"How do you know?" she demanded quickly.
+
+"That's just a guess of mine," he smiled.
+
+A musical voice called from within the house. "Have you seen my
+_Graphic_, Moya?"
+
+A young woman stood in the doorway, a golden-white beauty with soft
+smiling eyes that showed a little surprise at sight of the fisherman. A
+faint murmur of apology for the interruption escaped her lips.
+
+Kilmeny could not keep his eyes from her. What a superb young creature
+she was, what perfection in the animal grace of the long lines of the
+soft rounded body! Her movements had a light buoyancy that was charming.
+And where under heaven could a man hope to see anything lovelier than
+this pale face with its crown of burnished hair so lustrous and
+abundant?
+
+Miss Dwight turned to her friend. "I haven't seen the _Graphic_, Joyce,
+dear."
+
+"Isn't it in the billiard room? Thought I saw it there. I'll look,"
+Verinder volunteered.
+
+"Good of you," Miss Joyce nodded, her eyes on the stranger who had
+turned to leave.
+
+Kilmeny was going because he knew that he might easily outwear his
+welcome. He had punished Verinder, and that was enough. The miner had
+met too many like him not to know that the man belonged to the family of
+common or garden snob. No doubt he rolled in wealth made by his father.
+The fellow had studied carefully the shibboleths of the society with
+which he wished to be intimate and was probably letter-perfect. None the
+less, he was a bounder, a rank outsider tolerated only for his money. He
+might do for the husband of some penniless society girl, but he would
+never in the world be accepted by her as a friend or an equal. The
+thought of him stirred the gorge of the fisherman. Very likely the man
+might capture for a wife the slim dark girl with the quick eyes, or
+even her friend, Joyce, choicest flower in a garden of maidens. Nowadays
+money would do anything socially.
+
+"Cheekiest beggar I ever saw," fumed Verinder. "Don't see why you let
+the fellow stay, Miss Dwight."
+
+The girl's scornful eyes came round to meet his. She had never before
+known how cordially she disliked him.
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+She rose and walked quickly into the house.
+
+Verinder bit his mustache angrily. He had been cherishing a fiction that
+he was in love with Miss Dwight and more than once he had smarted
+beneath the lash of her contempt.
+
+Joyce sank gracefully into the easiest chair and flashed a dazzling
+smile at him. "Has Moya been _very_ unkind, Mr. Verinder?"
+
+He had joined the party a few days before at Chicago and this was the
+first sign of interest Miss Seldon had shown in him. Verinder was
+grateful.
+
+"Dashed if I understand Miss Dwight at all. She blows hot and cold," he
+confided in a burst of frankness.
+
+"That's just her way. We all have our moods, don't we? I mean we poor
+women. Don't all the poets credit us with inconstancy?" The least
+ripple of amusement at her sex swelled in her throat and died away.
+
+"Oh, by Jove, if that's all! I say, do you have moods too, Miss Joyce?"
+
+Her long thick lashes fluttered down to the cheeks. Was she embarrassed
+at his question? He felt a sudden lift of the heart, an access of
+newborn confidence. Dobyans Verinder had never dared to lift his hopes
+as high as the famous beauty Joyce Seldon. Now for the first time his
+vanity stirred. Somehow--quite unexpectedly to him--the bars between
+them were down. Was it possible that she had taken a fancy to him? His
+imagination soared.
+
+For a moment her deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden
+intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and
+seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in
+headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having
+been filled with the sensations and the impulses that she had contrived.
+
+Miss Seldon had that morning incidentally overheard Lady Farquhar tell
+her husband that Dobyans Verinder's fortune must be nearer two million
+pounds than one million. It was the first intimation she had been given
+that he was such a tremendous catch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NIGHT FISHING
+
+
+Jack Kilmeny crossed the river by the rope ferry and followed the trail
+that ran up. He took the water above the Narrows, about a mile and a
+half from camp. The mosquitoes were pretty bad near the willows along
+the shore, but as he got out farther they annoyed him less and with the
+coming of darkness they ceased to trouble.
+
+The fish were feeding and he had a few strikes. Half a dozen eight and
+nine-inch trout went into his creel, but though he was fishing along the
+edge of the deep water, the big fellows would not be tempted. His watch
+showed a quarter to ten by the moon when at last he hooked one worth
+while.
+
+He was now down by the riffles not far from the Lodge. A long cast
+brought him what fishermen along the Gunnison call a bump. Quietly he
+dropped his fly in exactly the same spot. There was a tug, a flash of
+white above the water, and, like an arrow, the trout was off. The reel
+whirred as the line unwound. Kilmeny knew by the pressure that he had
+hooked a good one and he played it carefully, keeping the line taut but
+not allowing too much strain on it. After a short sharp fight he drew
+the fish close enough to net the struggler. Of the Lochleven variety, he
+judged the weight of the trout to be about two pounds.
+
+He would have liked to try another cast, but it was ten o'clock, the
+limit set by law. He waded ashore, resolved to fish the riffles again
+to-morrow.
+
+Next day brought Kilmeny the office of camp cook, which was taken in
+turn by each of the men. Only two meals a day were eaten in camp, so
+that he had several hours of leisure after the breakfast things were
+cleared away. In a desultory fashion he did an hour or two of fishing,
+though his mind was occupied with other things.
+
+The arrival of the party at the Lodge brought back to him vividly some
+chapters of his life that had long been buried. His father, Archibald
+Kilmeny, had married the daughter of a small cattleman some years after
+he had come to Colorado. Though she had died while he was still a child,
+Jack still held warmly in his heart some vivid memories of the
+passionate uncurbed woman who had been his mother.
+
+She had been a belle in the cow country, charming in her way, beautiful
+to the day of her death, but without education or restraint. Her husband
+had made the mistake of taking her back to Ireland on a visit to his
+people. The result had been unfortunate. She was unconquerably
+provincial, entirely democratic, as uncultured as her native columbine.
+Moreover, her temper was of the whirlwind variety. The staid life of the
+old country, with its well-ordered distinctions of class and rutted
+conventions, did not suit her at all. At traditions which she could not
+understand the young wife scoffed openly. Before she left, veiled
+dislike became almost open war. The visit had never been repeated, nor,
+indeed, had she ever been invited again. This she had bitterly resented
+and she had instilled into Jack the antagonism she herself felt. When he
+was eight years old Jack's father had insisted on taking him back to
+meet his relatives. Immediately upon his return the youngster's mother
+had set about undermining any fondness he might have felt for his
+British kindred. Three years later she had died.
+
+She had been a doting mother, with fierce gusts of passionate adoration
+for her boy. Jack remembered these after he forgot her less amiable
+qualities. He had grown up with an unreasonable feeling of dislike
+toward those of his father's family who had failed to get along with
+her. Some instinct of loyalty which he could hardly define set him
+unconsciously in antagonism to his cousins at the Lodge. He had decided
+not to make himself known to them. In a few days their paths would
+diverge again for all time.
+
+Dusk found him again in the river just above the riffles. He fished down
+the stream slowly, shortening his line as darkness settled over the
+hills. His luck was rather worse than usual. The trout were nosing the
+flies rather than striking with any appetite.
+
+He was nearly opposite the Lodge when he noticed a fisherman in front of
+him. Working steadily forward, Kilmeny found himself gaining on the
+other. In order not to pass too near he struck out into the deeper water
+toward the center of the river. When almost opposite the other he heard
+a splash not twenty feet away, followed by the whirr of the reel as the
+trout made for the deep water. From the shadows where his unknown
+companion was obscured came the click of the line being wound up. There
+was a flash of silver in the moonlight, and again the rapid whirl of the
+reel.
+
+"You've hooked a whale, neighbor," Kilmeny called across.
+
+The voice that came back to him across the water was eager and glad.
+Jack would have known its throb of youthful zest among a thousand. "Must
+I let him have all the line he wants?"
+
+Kilmeny waded toward her as he gave counsel. "Don't make it too easy for
+him, but don't jerk. Keep his nose up if you can."
+
+The humming of the reel and the steady click-click-click of the winding
+alternated. The trout fought gamely and strongly, but the young woman
+stuck to her work and would not give him any rest. Jack watched her
+carefully. He saw that she was tiring, but he did not offer any help,
+for he knew that she was a sportsman. She would want to win alone or not
+at all.
+
+Yet he moved closer. The water was up to her hips, and no river in the
+Rockies has a swifter current than the Gunnison. The bottom too is
+covered with smooth slippery stones and bowlders, so that a misstep
+might send her plunging down. Deprived of the use of her landing pole,
+she could make less resistance to the tug of the stream, and the four or
+five pounds of dynamic energy at the end of her line would give her all
+she could do to take care of for the next few minutes. Her pole was
+braced against her body, which made reeling difficult. The man beside
+her observed that except for a tendency to raise the pole too much she
+was playing her trout like a veteran.
+
+The thing that he had anticipated happened. Her foot slipped from its
+insecure rock hold and she stumbled. His arm was round her waist in an
+instant.
+
+"Steady! Take your time."
+
+"Thanks. I'm all right now."
+
+His right arm still girdled her slight figure. It met with his approval
+that she had not cried out or dropped her pole, but he would not take
+the chance of an accident.
+
+[Illustration: "HE'S HOOKED PRETTY FAST. TAKE YOUR TIME ABOUT GETTING
+HIM INTO YOUR NET. THESE BIG FELLOWS ARE LIKELY TO SQUIRM AWAY." (p. 33)]
+
+The trout was tiring. Inch by inch she brought him nearer. Sometimes he
+would dart away again, but each dash for liberty was shorter and weaker
+than the last.
+
+Presently she panted, "My landing net."
+
+It was caught in the creel. Kilmeny unfastened the net and brought it
+round where it would be ready for instant use.
+
+"Tell me what I must do now."
+
+"He's hooked pretty fast. Take your time about getting him into your
+net, and be careful then. These big fellows are likely to squirm away."
+
+It was a ticklish moment when she let go of the rod with her left hand
+to slip the net under the trout, but she negotiated it in safety.
+
+"Isn't he a whopper?" she cried in delight. "He won't go into the creel
+at all."
+
+"Then let me have him. The glory is yours. I'll be your gillie to carry
+the game bag."
+
+He got his fingers through its gill before he took the hook from the
+mouth of the fish. Carrying the trout in one hand and his pole in the
+other, he waded slowly through the swift water to the shore.
+
+The girl's vibrant voice came to him as she splashed at his heels toward
+the bank. "He's such a ripping good one. I'm so pleased. How much do you
+think he will weigh?"
+
+The young man took the catch far enough back from the river, so that
+they could examine him in safety.
+
+"My guess is six pounds. He's the biggest taken this year so far. I
+congratulate you, Miss Dwight."
+
+"I would never have got him if you hadn't been there to help me with
+advice. But I really did it all myself, didn't I? If you had touched the
+rod before I had him netted I'd never have forgiven you," she confessed,
+eyes glowing with the joy of her achievement.
+
+"It's no joke to land one of these big fellows. I saw you were tired.
+But it's the sporting thing to play your own fish."
+
+Her dark eyes flashed a questioning glance at him. She had been brought
+up in a society where class lines were closely drawn, but her experience
+gave her no data for judging this young man's social standing. Casual
+inquiries of old Ballard, the caretaker at the Lodge, had brought her
+the information that the party of fishermen were miners from the hills.
+This one went by the name of Crumbs and sometimes Jack. What puzzled
+Miss Dwight was the difficulty of reconciling him with himself.
+Sometimes he used the speech and the slow drawl of the plainsman, and
+again he spoke with the correctness of one who has known good society.
+In spite of his careless garb he had the look of class. The well-shaped,
+lightly poised head, the level blue eyes of a man unafraid, the grace
+with which he carried himself, all denied that he was an uncouth rustic.
+
+A young woman of impulse, she yielded to an audacious one now. "I'm glad
+you let me do the sporting thing, Mr.--Crumbs."
+
+His gentle laughter welled out. "Where did you get that?"
+
+"Isn't it your name?" she asked, with a lift of the dark eyebrows.
+
+He hesitated, barely an instant. Of course she knew perfectly well that
+it was not his name. But it suited him not to give one more definite.
+
+"I reckon it's a name good enough to bring me to dinner by," he drawled,
+smiling.
+
+He was back again in the Western idiom and manner. She wondered why. The
+change had come when she had spoken his name. A certain wariness had
+settled over his face like a mask. She could see that he was purposely
+taking refuge in the class distinctions that presumably separated them.
+Yet she could have sworn that nothing had been farther from his mind
+during the exciting ten minutes in the water while voice and presence
+and arm had steadied her for the battle.
+
+They walked together up the slope to the big house. A fishing costume is
+not a thing of grace, but the one this girl wore could not eclipse the
+elastic suppleness of the slender figure or the joy in life that
+animated the vivid face with the black curls straying from beneath the
+jaunty cap. The long hip waders she wore so briskly gave her the look of
+a modern Rosalind. To deny her beauty was easy, but in the soft sifted
+moonlight showered down through the trees it was impossible for
+Kilmeny's eyes to refuse her an admission of charm. There was a hint of
+pleasant adventure in the dusky eyes of this clean-limbed young nymph, a
+plastic energy in the provoking dainty face, that stung his reluctant
+admiration. She had the gift for comradeship, and with it a freedom of
+mind unusual in one of her class.
+
+She ran up the steps of the Lodge lightly and thanked him with a
+pleasant "Good-night." As he turned away Kilmeny came face to face with
+another fisherman returning from the sport of the night. The man
+opposite him was rather short and thickset. In his eyes was a look of
+kind shrewd wisdom. Red-faced and white-bearded, he was unmistakably an
+Englishman of the upper class.
+
+Miss Dwight introduced him as Lord Farquhar, and the men shook hands.
+
+"Guess what I've got," demanded the young woman, her hands behind her.
+
+"Heaven only knows. It might be anything from the measles to a new
+lover," smiled Farquhar.
+
+She flashed upon him the fish that had been hidden behind her waders.
+
+"By Jove! Catch him yourself?"
+
+She nodded, her eyes shining.
+
+Farquhar, very much a sportsman, wanted to know all about it, after
+which he insisted on weighing the trout. Jack was dragged into the Lodge
+to join in this function, and presently found himself meeting Lady
+Farquhar, a pleasant plump lady who did not at all conform to the usual
+stage conception of her part. Her smile was warm for this supple
+blue-eyed engaging Westerner, but the latter did not need to be told
+that behind her friendliness the instinct of the chaperone was alert.
+The one swift glance she had thrown at Miss Dwight told him as much.
+
+Into the room drifted presently Miss Seldon, a late novel in her hand.
+In contrast with her sheathed loveliness Miss Dwight looked like a young
+girl. There was something very sweet and appealing in Moya's slim
+indefinite figure of youth, with its suggestion of developing lines, but
+most men ceased to look at her when Joyce swam within the orbit of their
+vision.
+
+Joyce Seldon was frankly a beauty in every line and feature. Her
+exquisite coloring, the soft amber hair so extravagant in quantity, the
+long lashes which shaded deep lovely eyes, satisfied the senses no less
+than the supple rounded young body which was carried with such light
+grace. Kilmeny was not very impressionable, but in her presence the
+world seemed somehow shot through with a new radiance. She laid upon
+him the spell of women.
+
+Presently Dobyans Verinder dropped in with an empty creel and opened
+wide supercilious eyes at sight of Jack. He was followed presently by
+Captain Kilmeny and his sister, the latter a pretty Irish girl, quick of
+tongue, quicker of eye, and ready for anything from flirting to fishing.
+
+From the talk, Jack gathered that Lord Farquhar and Miss Dwight had bet
+their catch would outweigh that of the other three, Farquhar and she to
+fish opposite the Lodge and the others half a mile below. The minority
+party had won easily, thanks to the big trout and Verinder's obstinacy
+in sticking to the flies he had used in England with success. There is a
+type of Englishman that goes through life using the flies he was brought
+up on and trying to make them fit all places and times. Any divergence
+is a form of treason. Neither Farquhar nor Kilmeny happened to be of
+that kind. They besieged the American with questions and soon had a
+pretty fair idea of fishing on the Gunnison.
+
+"I should think you would ask me. I thought I was the one that catches
+the big fish," suggested Miss Dwight, who had just returned from having
+changed into more conventional attire.
+
+"Make a habit of it, my dear, and we will," Lord Farquhar assured her.
+
+"Once is enough, Moya. I can't afford a pair of gloves every evening,"
+India Kilmeny protested.
+
+"By Jove, leave some of the big ones for us, Miss Dwight," implored the
+captain. He was a spare wiry man, with the long clean build one expects
+to see in soldiers. Long residence in India had darkened his skin to an
+almost coffee brown, except for a wintry apple red where the high cheek
+bones seemed about to push through.
+
+Supper, to which Lady Farquhar had insisted that the American stay, was
+being served informally in the living-room. Verinder helped himself to a
+sandwich, ogling Moya the while with his eyeglass.
+
+"I say, you know, I believe in you, Miss Dwight," he asserted.
+
+That young woman did not know why she resented more than usual his
+wheedling attentions. Lady Jim had invited the millionaire to join their
+party, as the girl very well knew, in order to give her charges a chance
+at him. Not that Lady Farquhar liked the man. She knew him quite well
+for an ill-bred little snob at heart. But he would pass muster in a
+crowd, and none of the young women of the party could afford to sniff at
+two millions sterling. It was entirely probable that Joyce, with her
+beauty and her clear vision of the need of money in the scheme of
+things, would marry as well as if she had a mother to look out for her.
+But Lady Jim felt it her duty to plan for India and Moya. She was more
+anxious about Miss Dwight than the other Irish girl, for Moya was likely
+to bolt the traces. Her friendships with men were usually among
+ineligibles. Verinder had shown a decided drift in her direction, but
+the girl had not encouraged him in the least. If she had been possessed
+of an independent fortune she could not have been more airily
+indifferent to his advances.
+
+Since Captain Kilmeny had joined the party in Denver the plans of Lady
+Farquhar had been modified. The soldier had taken an early opportunity
+to tell her that he meant to ask Moya Dwight to marry him. He had been
+in love with her for years and had asked her just before his regiment
+left for India the last time. The captain was not rich, but he had
+enough. It happened too that he was a clean honest gentleman who had
+made a reputation for efficiency and gallantry in the army. If he was
+not brilliant, he was at least thorough. Lady Farquhar was quite willing
+to back his suit so far as she could.
+
+"He's our kind, Ned Kilmeny is," she had told her husband. "I gave Moya
+her chance with Verinder but I should have been disappointed in her if
+she had taken him. If she will only fall in love with Ned I'll forgive
+her all the queer things she is always doing."
+
+Farquhar had chuckled. "It's an odds-on chance she'll not fancy him,
+Di."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, why not?" his wife had asked impatiently. "Does she
+expect to marry an emperor?"
+
+"I don't know what she expects. The subject of matrimony is not
+all-important to Moya yet. But some day it will be--and then may I be
+there to see!"
+
+"You're so ridiculously wrapped up in her," Lady Jim accused with a
+smile. "Why do you expect her love affair to be so interesting? For my
+part, I think Ned quite good enough for her."
+
+"Oh, he's good enough. That isn't quite the point, is it? Moya wants to
+be stormed, to be swept from her feet into the arms of the man she is
+ready to love. A sort of a Lochinvar business--full of thrills and great
+moments. Ned can't give her those."
+
+"No, I suppose not. Pity she can't be sensible."
+
+"There are enough of us sensible, Di. We can spare her a few years yet
+for romance. When she grows sensible she'll have to give up something
+she can't afford to lose."
+
+His wife looked at him and smiled fondly. "You haven't quite lost it
+yourself, Jim."
+
+It was true enough that Lord Farquhar retained an interest in life that
+was refreshing. This evening his eyes gleamed while the Westerner told
+of the frontier day program to be held at the little town of Gunnison
+next day.
+
+"You and your friends are miners, I understand. You'll not take part,
+then?" he asked.
+
+"I used to punch cows. My name is entered for the riding. The boys want
+me to take a turn."
+
+India Kilmeny sat up straight. "Let's go. We can ride up in the morning.
+It will be jolly. All in favor of going eat another sandwich."
+
+"It will be pretty woolly--quite different from anything you have seen,"
+the miner suggested.
+
+"Thought we came here to fish," Verinder interposed. "Great bore looking
+at amateur shows--and it's a long ride."
+
+"Move we go. What say, Lady Farquhar?" put in Captain Kilmeny.
+
+"Do let's go," Moya begged.
+
+"I don't see why we shouldn't," Lady Farquhar smiled. "But I'm like Mr.
+Verinder about riding. If he'll drive me up the rest of you can go on
+horseback."
+
+"Delighted, 'm sure."
+
+Verinder came to time outwardly civil but inwardly fuming. What the
+deuce did Lady Farquhar mean? Captain Kilmeny would have five hours
+clear with Miss Dwight and Miss Seldon during the ride back and forth.
+Ever since the soldier had joined the party things had been going badly.
+
+"If we're going it's time you girls were in bed. You've had a hard day
+and to-morrow will be another," Lady Jim pronounced.
+
+The Westerner rose to go.
+
+"Night's young yet. Stop and sit in with us to a game of poker. What!"
+Farquhar invited.
+
+"My pocketbook is at the camp," the American demurred.
+
+"I'll be your banker," his host volunteered.
+
+The ladies said good-night and departed. Chairs were drawn to the card
+table, chips sold, and hands dealt. The light of morning was breaking
+before Kilmeny made his way back to camp. He had in his pockets one
+hundred seventy three dollars, most of which had recently been the
+property of Dobyans Verinder.
+
+An early start for Gunnison had been agreed upon by the fishermen at the
+camp. To go to bed now was hardly worth while. Jack took a towel from
+the willow bush upon which it was hanging, went down to the river,
+stripped, and from a rock ten feet above a deep pool dived straight as
+an arrow into the black water. The swirl of the current swept him into
+the shallower stream below. He waded ashore, beautiful in his supple
+slimness as an Apollo, climbed the rock a second time, and again knew
+the delightful shock of a dive into icy water fresh from the mountain
+snows.
+
+Ten minutes later he wakened the camp by rattling the stove lids.
+
+"Oh, you sluggards! Time to hit the floor," he shouted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE
+
+
+At the Lodge too an early breakfast was held, though it was five hours
+later than the one at the camp. The whole party was down by nine-thirty
+and was on the road within the hour. The morning was such a one as only
+the Rockies can produce. The wine of it ran through the blood warm and
+stimulating. A blue sky flecked with light mackerel clouds stretched
+from the fine edge of the mountains to the ragged line of hills that cut
+off the view on the other side.
+
+The horses were keen for the road and the pace was brisk. It was not
+until half the distance had been covered that Joyce, who was riding
+beside the captain, found opportunity for conversation.
+
+"You sat up late, didn't you?"
+
+"Early," the soldier laughed.
+
+"How did the savage behave himself?"
+
+"He went the distance well. We all contributed to the neat little roll
+he carried away." Kilmeny smiled as he spoke. He was thinking of
+Verinder, who had made a set against the miner and had tried to drive
+him out by the size of his raises. The result had been unfortunate for
+the millionaire.
+
+"He has a good deal of assurance, hasn't he?" she asked lightly.
+
+The captain hesitated. "Do you think that's quite the word? He fitted in
+easily--wasn't shy or awkward--that sort of thing, you know--but he
+wasn't obtrusive at all. Farquhar likes him."
+
+"He's rather interesting," Joyce admitted.
+
+She thought of him as a handsome untamed young barbarian, but it was
+impossible for her to deny a certain amount of regard for any virile man
+who admired her. The Westerner had not let his eyes rest often upon her,
+but the subtle instinct of her sex had told her that he was very much
+taken with her. Since Joyce Seldon was the center and circumference
+about which most of her thoughts revolved, it followed that the young
+man had chosen the sure way to her favor.
+
+Moya Dwight too found that the young fisherman flitted in and out of her
+mind a good deal. He had told her, with that sardonic smile, that he was
+a workingman. Indeed, there had been something almost defiant in the way
+he had said it, as if he would not for a moment accept their hospitality
+on false pretenses. But, surely, he was worlds apart from any laborer
+she had ever seen. Last evening he had been as much at his ease as Lord
+Farquhar himself. A little uncertainty about the use of the spoons and
+forks had not disturbed him at all. In spite of the soft vocal elisions
+of the West, his speech had a dignity that suggested breeding. It was
+quite likely he was not a gentleman, according to the code in which she
+had been brought up, but it was equally sure there burned in him that
+dynamic spark of self-respect which is at the base of all good manners.
+
+The little town of Gunnison rioted with life. Born and brought up as she
+had been in the iron caste of modern super-civilization, Moya found the
+barbaric color of the occasion very appealing. As she looked down on the
+arena from the box her party occupied, the heart of the girl throbbed
+with the pure joy of it all. She loved this West, with its picturesque
+chap-clad brown-faced riders. They were a hard-bitten lot, burned to a
+brick red by the untempered sun of the Rockies. Cheerful sons of mirth
+they were, carrying their years with a boyish exuberance that was
+delightful.
+
+Most of the competitors for the bucking broncho championship had been
+eliminated before the arrival of the party from the Lodge. Among the
+three who had reached the finals was their guest of the previous
+evening.
+
+"Jack Kilmeny will ride Teddy Roosevelt," blared the megaphone man.
+
+The English officer turned to Farquhar. "Didn't quite catch the name.
+Sounded like my own."
+
+"That's what I thought," contributed his sister. A moment later, she
+added: "Why, it's Mr. Crumbs."
+
+That young man sauntered forward lazily, dragging his saddle by its
+horn. He saddled the trembling animal warily, then swung lightly to the
+seat. The broncho stood for an instant motionless, then humped itself
+from the earth, an incarnate demon of action. As a pitcher, a weaver, a
+sunfisher, this roan had no equal. Its ill-shaped nose and wicked red
+eyes were enough to give one bad dreams. But the lean-flanked young
+miner appeared clamped to the saddle. Lithe and sinuous as a panther, he
+rode with a perfect ease that was captivating. Teddy tried all its
+tricks. It went up into the air and came down with all four legs stiff
+as iron posts. It shot forward in a series of quick sharp bucks. It
+flung itself against the wall of the arena to crush the leg of this
+rider who held the saddle with such perfect poise. But Jack Kilmeny was
+equal to the occasion and more. When the brute went over backward, in a
+somersault, he was out of the saddle and in again before the vicious
+outlaw had staggered to its feet. Even the frontier West had never seen
+a more daring and magnificent piece of horsemanship.
+
+Captain Kilmeny clapped his hands enthusiastically. "Bravo! Well done!"
+He turned to Moya, who sat beside him. "Finest bit of rough-riding I
+ever saw. Not one man in a million could have done it."
+
+"It's all in getting the hang of the thing, you know," drawled Verinder
+complacently.
+
+Moya, who was leaning forward with her dark eyes fixed on the two superb
+animals fighting for mastery in the arena, thought both comments
+characteristic. The captain was a sportsman and a gentleman, the
+millionaire was neither.
+
+India whispered in the ear of Moya. "He's as broadminded as a crab, just
+about."
+
+The reference was of course to Verinder. "I think we ought to be fair,
+even to a crab, dear," Miss Dwight answered dryly.
+
+The battle between the outlaw broncho and its rider was over. The
+confidence of Teddy Roosevelt as well as its strength had been shaken.
+The bucks of the pony were easy to foresee. Presently they ceased. The
+horse stood with drooping head, foam dripping from its mouth, flanks
+flecked with sweat stains.
+
+Kilmeny swung from the saddle, and at the same time Colter stepped into
+the arena. He drew Jack aside and whispered in his ear. India, watching
+the rough-rider through field glasses, saw the face of the young man
+grow grim and hard. Without the delay of a moment he pushed through the
+crowd that gathered to congratulate him and walked out of the grounds
+with Colter.
+
+The other two riders who had reached the finals were both experts in the
+saddle. One of them, however, had been traveling with a Wild West show
+and was too soft to hold his own against the bit of incarnate deviltry
+he was astride. To save himself he had to clutch at the horn of the
+saddle.
+
+"He's pulling leather," shouted one of the judges, and the man was waved
+aside.
+
+The third cowpuncher made a good showing, but his horse lacked the
+energy and spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. The unanimous decision of the
+judges was in favor of Kilmeny. But when they sought for him to award
+the prize the new champion was nowhere to be found.
+
+Moya Dwight felt with genuine disappointment that the man's courtesy had
+failed. She and her friends had applauded his exploits liberally. The
+least he could have done would have been to have made a short call at
+their box. Instead, he had ignored them. She resolved to bear herself
+more coldly if they met again.
+
+The early shadows of sunset were stretching down the rough mountain
+sides by the time the visitors from the Lodge reached the river canon on
+their homeward way. Soon after this the champion rider and his friend
+Colter passed them on a stretch of narrow road cut in the steep wall of
+the gulch. The leathery face of the latter took them in impassively as
+he gave them a little nod of recognition, but the younger man reined in
+for a few words. He accepted their congratulations with a quiet "Glad
+you enjoyed it," but it was plain that he was in a hurry. In his eyes
+there was a certain hard wariness that seemed hardly to fit the
+occasion. Moya could not avoid the impression that he was anxious about
+something. As soon as he well could he put spurs to his horse and
+cantered after his companion.
+
+"I don't like your savage as well as I thought I was going to. If he
+can't be pleasanter than that you may keep him yourself, Moya," Joyce
+announced with a smile.
+
+It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later that the sound of hard riding
+reached them from the rear. Five dusty, hard-bitten men, all armed with
+rifles and revolvers, drew level with them. The leader threw a crisp
+question at Lord Farquhar.
+
+"Two riders pass you lately?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One on a big sorrel and the other on a roan with white stockings on the
+front feet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Say anything?"
+
+"The younger one stopped for a few words. He is a Mr. Crumbs, camped on
+the river just below us."
+
+The lank man with the rifle across his saddle bow laughed grimly. "Yes,
+he is--not. His name is Kilmeny--Jack Kilmeny. I'm the sheriff of
+Gunnison County--and I want him bad."
+
+"Did you say Kilmeny?" asked the captain sharply.
+
+"That's what I said--the man that won the broncho busting contest
+to-day."
+
+To Moya, looking around upon the little group of armed men, there was a
+menacing tenseness in their manner. Her mind was groping for an
+explanation, but she understood this much--that the law was reaching out
+for the devil-may-care youth who had so interested her.
+
+"What do you want with him? What has he done?" she cried quickly.
+
+"He and his friend held up the gatekeeper of the fair association and
+got away with three thousand dollars."
+
+"Held up! Do you mean robbed?"
+
+"That's what I mean--vamoosed with the whole proceeds of the show. How
+long since they passed?"
+
+"Between a quarter and half an hour," answered Farquhar.
+
+The sheriff nodded. "All ready, boys."
+
+The clattering hoofs disappeared in a cloud of dust down the road.
+
+The rough places of life had been padded for all these young women.
+Never before had they come so close to its raw, ugly seams. The shadow
+of the law, the sacredness of caste, had always guarded them.
+
+India turned upon her brother big dilated eyes. "He said Kilmeny. Who
+can the man be?"
+
+"I don't know." He was silent a moment in frowning thought, struck by an
+unwelcome idea. "You remember Uncle Archie. He had a son named Jack who
+lives somewhere in Colorado. D'ye remember he came home when you were a
+little kiddie? Stopped at granddad's."
+
+The girl nodded. "He fought you once, didn't he?"
+
+The captain nodded. The doubt began to grow into certainty. "Thought I
+had seen his face before. He's our cousin Jack. That's who he is."
+
+"And now he's a highwayman. By Jove, he doesn't look it," contributed
+Farquhar.
+
+"I don't believe it. Such nonsense!" flamed Moya.
+
+"Fancy! A real live highwayman to supper with us," Joyce reminded them
+with sparkling eyes.
+
+"I'm sure he isn't. There must be a mistake."
+
+"He was troubled about something, Moya," Lord Farquhar suggested. "He
+and his friend were riding fast and plainly in a hurry."
+
+"Didn't he stop to talk?"
+
+"He had to do that to avoid suspicion. I could see his mind wasn't on
+what he was saying. The man was anxious."
+
+"I thought you liked him," Moya charged scornfully.
+
+Her guardian smiled. "I did, but that isn't evidence that will acquit
+him in court of being a road agent."
+
+"He's India's cousin--maybe. How could he be a criminal? Shall we have
+to cut her and Captain Kilmeny now?" Miss Dwight demanded hotly.
+
+The captain laughed, but there was no mirth in his laughter. "You're a
+stanch friend, Miss Dwight. By Jove, I hope you're right about him."
+
+Deep in her heart Moya was not at all sure. What did she know of him?
+And why should she care what he was? The man was a stranger to her.
+Forty-eight hours ago she had never seen him. Why was it that every good
+looking vagabond with a dash of the devil in him drew on her sympathies?
+She recalled now that he had hesitated when she had mentioned his name,
+no doubt making up his mind to let her think him other than he was. The
+sheriff must know what he was talking about when he said the man was an
+outlaw. But the appearance of him pleaded potently. Surely those clear
+unflinching eyes were not the homes of villainy. Nor could she find it
+possible to think his gallant grace of bearing the possession of a
+miscreant.
+
+Before the day was out her faith in him had sunk to zero. Captain
+Kilmeny returned from the camp of the miners with the news that it was
+deserted except for two of the deputies who had stayed to guard it
+against the possible return of the robbers. He brought with him the
+detailed story of the hold-up.
+
+Two masked men on horseback had robbed the treasurer of the Gunnison
+County Fair association as he was driving to the bank to deposit the
+receipts of the day. The men had not been recognized, but the
+description of the horses corresponded closely to those ridden by
+Kilmeny and Colter. It was recalled that these two men had disappeared
+as soon as the bucking broncho contest was over, not half an hour before
+the robbery. This would allow them just time to return to the corral on
+the outskirts of the town, where they had left their mounts, and to
+saddle so as to meet the treasurer on his way to the bank. It happened
+that the corral was deserted at the time, the boy in charge having left
+to see the finals of the contest. Cumulative evidence of guilt lay in
+the disappearance from the fishing camp not only of the two men
+suspected, but also of their companions, Curly and Mosby.
+
+"Think he really did it, Ned?" India asked her brother.
+
+"Can't say, sis. Looks like it," he answered gloomily.
+
+Of the party at the Lodge only one member was pleased at the turn events
+had taken. Verinder's manner was as openly triumphant as he dared allow
+it to become. It cried offensively, "I told you so!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"I'M HERE, NEIGHBOR"
+
+
+Moya still rode afternoons with her friends, fished occasionally, and
+took her regular hand at bridge. But it was unaccountably true that her
+zest in these amusements was gone. She could give no satisfactory reason
+for it, but she felt as if something had passed out of her life forever.
+It was as if the bubbling youth in her were quenched. The outstanding
+note of her had been the eagerness with which she had run out to meet
+new experiences. Now she found herself shrinking from them. Whenever she
+could the girl was glad to slip away by herself. To the charge that she
+was in love with this young vagabond she would have given a prompt
+denial. Nevertheless, Lady Farquhar recognized the symptoms as
+dangerous.
+
+On the fifth day after the Gunnison trip the young people at the Lodge
+made a party to fish Sunbeam Creek. They followed the stream far into
+the hills, riding along the trail which bordered it. Kilmeny and
+Verinder carried lunch baskets, for they were to make a day of it and
+return only in time for a late dinner.
+
+Moya made her brave pretense of gayety. With alacrity she responded to
+Verinder's challenge of a bet on the relative sizes of their catches.
+But as soon as the rest were out of sight she sat down in a shady spot
+and fell to musing.
+
+How long she sat there, a sun-dappled nymph upon whom gleams of light
+filtered through the leaves of the aspens, she had not the least idea.
+The voice of a grizzled rider startled her from her dreams. Her lifted
+eyes took in the grim look of the man, garnished with weapons ready to
+his hands.
+
+"Mornin', miss," he nodded amiably.
+
+"Good-morning." And swift on the heels of it, "You are a deputy sheriff,
+are you not?"
+
+"Rung the bell, ma'am. You belong to the English outfit, I reckon."
+
+She smiled. "I suppose so, though I don't know what an outfit is."
+
+"I mean to Lord What's-his-name's party."
+
+"Yes, I think I do. I'm rather sure of it."
+
+"Funny about some members of your crowd having the same name as the man
+we're looking for."
+
+"Mr. Kilmeny, you mean?"
+
+"Jack Kilmeny! Yes, ma'am."
+
+"He introduced himself to us, but I don't think the name he went by was
+Kilmeny. I was told it was Crumbs."
+
+"That's just a joke. His friends call him that because his people are
+'way up in G. Fine bred--crumbs. Get the idea?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Came from the old country, his father did--son of some big gun over
+there. Likely he's some kin to your friends."
+
+He put the last observation as a question, with a sharp glance from
+under his heavy gray eyebrows. Moya chose to regard it as a statement.
+
+"Are you still searching for him?" she asked.
+
+"You bet we are. The sheriff's got a notion he's up in these hills
+somewheres. A man answering his description was seen by some rancher.
+But if you ask _me_, I'd say he was busy losing himself 'way off in
+Routt County, clear off the map. He used to punch cows up there and he
+knows all kinds of holes to hide in. It don't stand to reason he'd still
+be fooling around here. He's bridle-wise and saddle-broke--knows every
+turn of the road."
+
+"Yes," Moya assented listlessly.
+
+"He had his getaway all planned before ever he came down here. That's a
+cinch. The fishing was all a bluff. The four of them had the hold-up
+arranged weeks ago. They've gone into a hole and drawn it in after
+them."
+
+"Don't you think there's a chance he didn't do it?" she asked in a
+forlorn way.
+
+"Not a chance. Jack Kilmeny and Colter pulled off the play. What the
+others had to do with it I don't know."
+
+The deputy passed to the fishing in his conversation, hoped she would
+have luck, stroked his white goatee, and presently departed.
+
+The man had scarcely disappeared around a bend in the gulch before a
+sound startled her. Moya turned quickly, to see a man drop down the face
+of a large rock to the ground. Even before he turned she recognized that
+pantherine grace and her heart lost a beat.
+
+He came straight toward her, with the smile in his blue eyes that
+claimed comradeship as a matter of course.
+
+"You--here," she gasped.
+
+"I'm here, neighbor. Where ought I to be--in Routt County losing
+myself?"
+
+Her little hand was lost in his big brown fist, her gaze locked in his.
+
+"You heard him?"
+
+"Couldn't help it. I was working down through that grove of pines to the
+river when I saw him."
+
+"He may come back." Her quick glance went up the gulch into which the
+deputy had disappeared.
+
+"I reckon not. Let's sit down and talk."
+
+Her first thought had been of his danger, but she remembered something
+else now. "No, I think not, Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+The deep eyes that met his steadily had in them the rapier flash. He
+smiled.
+
+"Because I am a miscreant, I reckon," he drawled.
+
+"You say it, not I."
+
+"Now you're dodging, neighbor. You think it."
+
+"If so, do I think more than the truth?"
+
+A ripple of sardonic laughter stirred in him. "I see you have me
+convicted and in the penitentiary already."
+
+"Your actions convict you."
+
+"So _you_ think. Isn't it just possible you don't understand them?"
+There was the faintest hint of derision in his polite inquiry.
+
+A light flashed in her dusky eyes, a shining hope newborn in her eager
+heart. "Are you telling me that you are innocent?"
+
+"You've been thinking me guilty, then," he countered swiftly.
+
+"What else could I think?"
+
+"You might have waited to hear the defense."
+
+"If you had stayed to make one, but you ran away."
+
+"How do you know I did?"
+
+"You were gone when the officers reached your camp."
+
+His smile was grim and his voice defiant. "There was a man up in the
+hills I wanted to see in a hurry."
+
+By the look in her eyes it was as if he had struck her. With fine
+contempt her answer came. "Was there another man up there in the rocks
+just now that you had to see until the deputy left?"
+
+"Anyhow, there was a young woman down by the banks of Sunbeam I wanted
+to see after he was gone," the fugitive claimed boldly.
+
+A faint angry flush glowed delicately beneath the olive of her cheeks.
+"Evasions--nothing but evasions."
+
+She turned away, sick at heart. He had treated with flippancy the chance
+she had given him. Would an innocent man have done that?
+
+Swift as an arrow his hand shot out, caught her shoulder, and held her
+firmly. The eyes that lifted to his flamed with proud resentment.
+
+"I'm not going to let you go like this. Don't think it."
+
+"Sir."
+
+"You'll do me justice first." His hand dropped from her shoulder, but
+the masterful look of him stayed her steps. "You'll tell me what
+evidence you've got against me."
+
+Again an insurgent hope warmed her heart. Wild he might be, but surely
+no criminal--if there was any truth in faces.
+
+What she had heard against him she told. "The robbers were riding
+horses like yours. You left the fair grounds early. You and your friend
+were seen going into the corral where you had stabled the animals. This
+was less than half an hour before the robbery. When you passed us on the
+road you were anxious about something. You looked back two or three
+times. Both you and Mr. Colter showed you were in a hurry. Then you ran
+away before the sheriff reached your camp. Does an innocent man do
+that?" She put her question as an accusation, but in the voice was a
+little tremble that asked to be refuted.
+
+"Sometimes he does. Now listen to me. The horses ridden by the robbers
+were Colter's and mine. We certainly were worried about the time we met
+you. And we did break camp in a hurry so as to miss the sheriff. Does
+this prove me guilty?"
+
+She brushed away the soft waves of dark hair that had fallen over her
+forehead in little escaping tendrils. The fearless level eyes of the
+outdoors West were looking straight at her.
+
+"I don't know. Does it?"
+
+"We'll say this evidence had piled up against Captain Kilmeny instead of
+against me. Would you have believed him guilty?"
+
+"No. He couldn't have done it."
+
+"On the same evidence you would acquit him and condemn me. Is that
+fair?"
+
+"I have known him for years--his standards, his ways of thinking. All
+his life he has schooled himself to run a straight course."
+
+"Whereas I----" He waited, the sardonic frosty smile on his lean strong
+face.
+
+Moya knew that the flutter of her pulses was telling tales in the pink
+of her cheeks. "I don't know you."
+
+"I'm only a workingman, and an American at that--so it follows that I
+must be a criminal," he answered with a touch of bitterness.
+
+"No--no! But you're--different. There's something untamed about you. I
+don't quite know how to put it--as if you had been brought up without
+restraints, as if you didn't care much for law."
+
+"Why should I? Law is a weapon to bolster up the rich and keep down the
+poor," he flung back with an acid smile. "But there's law and law. Even
+in our class we have our standards, such as they are."
+
+"Now it's you that isn't fair," she told him quietly. "You know I meant
+nothing like that. The point is that I don't know what your standards
+are. Law doesn't mean so much to people here. Your blood runs freer,
+less evenly than ours. You don't let the conventions hamper you."
+
+"The convention of honesty, for instance. Thanks, Miss Dwight."
+
+"I didn't want to believe it, but----"
+
+The penitence in her vivid face pleaded for her. He could not refuse the
+outstretched hand of this slender lance-straight girl whose sweet
+vitality was at once so delicate and so gallant. Reluctantly his palm
+met hers.
+
+"You're quite sure now that I didn't do it?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Even though I've been brought up badly?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't say badly--really. You know I didn't."
+
+"And though I'm wild and lawless?"
+
+"Aren't you?" she flashed back with a smile that took from the words any
+sting they might otherwise have had.
+
+Mirth overflowed in his eyes, from which now many little creases
+radiated. "You're a good one, neighbor. But, since you will have it, I
+am. I reckon my standards even of honesty wouldn't square with yours. I
+live in a rough mining camp where questions have two sides. It's up to
+me to play the game the way the other fellow plays it. But we'll not go
+into that now."
+
+Strong, clear-eyed and masterful, she knew him a man among ten thousand.
+He might be capable of great sin, but what he did would be done with his
+eyes wide open and not from innate weakness. Her heart sang jubilantly.
+How could she ever have dreamed this crime of him? Her trust was now a
+thing above any evidence.
+
+"And you'll sit down with me now if I ask you, neighbor," he laughed.
+
+She did not wait to be asked, but sat down, tailor fashion, and looked
+expectantly up with a humorous little twist of the eyebrows. Flakes of
+dappled sunlight played on her through the moving leaves and accented
+the youthful bloom of her.
+
+With a sigh of content he stretched himself on the sun-warmed loam. His
+glance swept up the gulch, a sword cleft in the hills, passed over the
+grove of young pines through which he had recently descended, and came
+back to the slim Irish girl sitting erectly on the turf.
+
+"It's sometimes a mighty good world, neighbor," he said.
+
+"I'm thinking that myself," she admitted, laughter welling softly out of
+her.
+
+The sun lit the tips of the pines, so that they looked like burnished
+lances in battle array, poured its beams over the scarred hillside, and
+bathed the little valley in effulgent glory.
+
+"You can always find it somewhere," he said with deep content, leaning
+on an elbow indolently.
+
+She asked for no antecedent to his pronoun. What he meant was not
+ambiguous to her.
+
+"If one knows where to look for it," she added softly.
+
+"That's the trouble. We get so busy with our little everyday troubles
+that we forget to look. But the joy of life is always there if we'll
+forget our grouch and see it."
+
+"Yes--if having eyes we see."
+
+"I'm comforted a heap to know that you believe in me--even if I'm not
+Captain Kilmeny," he assured her with his slow rippling laugh.
+
+Had he been looking at her he would have seen the telltale color tide
+her cheeks. "If that is a comfort you are welcome to it. I might have
+known the idea of connecting you with such a thing was folly."
+
+He glanced whimsically at her. "Don't be too sure of me, neighbor. I'm
+likely to disappoint you. What one person thinks is right another knows
+is wrong. You'd have to make a heap of allowances for me if I were your
+friend."
+
+"Isn't that what friendship is for--to make allowances?"
+
+"You've found that out already, have you?"
+
+The long-lashed lids fell to her cheeks in self-defense. Not for worlds
+would she have had him guess the swift message ready to leap out toward
+him. He seemed to be drawing her soul to his unconsciously. Tingling in
+every nerve, athrob with an emotion new and inexplicable, she drew a
+long slow breath and turned her head away. A hot shame ran like
+quicksilver through her veins. She whipped herself with her own scorn.
+Was she the kind of girl that gave her love to a man who did not want
+it?
+
+His next words brought to her the shock she needed, the effect of a
+plunge into icy water on a warm day.
+
+"What about your friends--what about Miss Seldon--did she believe me
+guilty too?" He could not quite keep the self-consciousness out of his
+voice.
+
+"Hadn't you better ask her that?" she suggested.
+
+In spite of his interest in their talk, Kilmeny's alert eyes had swept
+again and again the trail leading up the gulch. He did not intend to be
+caught napping by the officers. Now he rose and offered her a hand up.
+
+"Your friends are coming."
+
+Swiftly Moya came to earth from her emotions. In another moment she was
+standing beside the fugitive, her gaze on the advancing group. Captain
+Kilmeny was in the lead and was the first to recognize her companion. If
+he was surprised, his voice failed to show it.
+
+"No, no, Verinder. I had him hooked all right," he was saying. "Dashed
+poor generalship lost him. He went into the rushes like a shot. I
+persuaded him out--had him in the open water. Looked to me like a two to
+one shot, hang it. Mr. Trout develops a bad break to the off and heads
+under a big log. Instead of moving down the bank I'm ass enough to reel
+from where I hooked him. Leader snaps, and Mr. Trout has the laugh on
+me."
+
+To the sound of that high cheerful voice Moya roused at once. The rapt
+expression died from her face.
+
+"How many?" called India, holding up her string.
+
+"I haven't been fishing," Moya answered; then gave herself away. "It
+surely isn't time for luncheon already."
+
+She took a step toward her friends, so that for the first time Jack
+Kilmeny stood plainly revealed. India's pretty piquant face set to a
+red-lipped soundless whistle. Joyce stared in frank amusement. Verinder,
+rutted in caste and respectability as only a social climber dubious of
+his position can be, ejaculated a "God bless my soul!" and collapsed
+beyond further articulation. Captain Kilmeny nodded to the Westerner
+without embarrassment.
+
+"Mornin', Mr. Crumbs."
+
+"Good-morning. But you have the name wrong, sir."
+
+"Beg pardon." The captain's eyebrows lifted in inquiry.
+
+"Kilmeny," the American corrected.
+
+Nonchalantly the captain came to time. "Same name as ours. Wonder if by
+any chance we're of the same family. Happen to be any relation of
+Archibald Kilmeny, who died in Colorado fifteen years ago?"
+
+Jack looked at him quietly. "A son."
+
+"Makes us cousins. He was my father's brother."
+
+The Westerner nodded coolly, not in the least impressed. "Yes."
+
+It would have been easy to read hostility in his bearing, but India
+sailed past her brother with hand extended. "Glad to meet you, Cousin
+Jack. 'Member me? Last time you saw me I was a squalling five-year-old."
+
+The American warmed a trifle. "I remember you, all right. Never saw a
+kid before so fond of currant jam."
+
+"Still am. You've improved in your personal appearance. Last time I saw
+your eye it had been beautifully blacked, kindness of Ned."
+
+"Fortune of war. My lip was swollen for a week," her brother laughed as
+he extended his hand.
+
+"Ned got caned for fighting with a guest. Served him jolly well right,"
+Miss Kilmeny said.
+
+Joyce sailed forward into the picture gracefully. Her radiant beauty
+took the Westerner's breath.
+
+"You'll stay with us for luncheon," she said with soft animation. "For,
+of course, this is an occasion. Long-lost cousins do not meet every
+day."
+
+Verinder, making speechless sounds of protest at this indiscretion, grew
+very red in the face. Would he have to sit down to eat with a criminal
+at large?
+
+Jack hesitated scarcely a second. He could not take his gaze from this
+superb young creature, whose every motion charmed, whose deep eyes
+glowed with such a divine warmth of molten gold.
+
+"Thanks awf'lly, but I really can't stay."
+
+He bowed to one and another, turned upon Joyce that look of dumb worship
+she had seen on the faces of many men, and swung off into the pines, as
+elastic-heeled, confident, and competent a youth as any of them had seen
+in many a day.
+
+India's eyes danced. She was Irish enough to enjoy a situation so
+unusual. "Snubbed, Joyce, by a highwayman," she laughed.
+
+But Joyce merely smiled. She knew what she knew.
+
+"If you ask me, he's got the deuce of a cheek, you know," Verinder
+fumed.
+
+Miss Kilmeny pounced instantly upon him. "Referring to our cousin, Mr.
+Verinder?" she demanded sweetly.
+
+"But--er--you said yourself----"
+
+"That was all in the family," she informed him promptly.
+
+Joyce came to the assistance of Verinder with one confidential glance of
+her incredibly deep eyes of velvet. "Of course he's cheeky. How could he
+be India's cousin and not be that?" she asked with a rippling little
+laugh. "Come and help me spread the tablecloth, Mr. Verinder."
+
+Deeply grateful, the millionaire flew to assist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LORD FARQUHAR GIVES MOYA A HINT
+
+
+Verinder's man, Biggs, who had been a fascinated spectator of the Wild
+West sports at Gunnison, was describing them to Fisher, maid to Lady
+Farquhar and general buttoner-up-the-back to the entire feminine
+contingent of the party.
+
+"What do you mean when you say a horse bucks?" she wanted to know.
+
+"'E throws down 'is 'ead and 'e throws up 'is 'eels and you cawn't
+remain," he explained, without entire originality.
+
+"Fancy now!"
+
+"Consequence is the rider lands himpromptu on _terra firma_, so to
+hexpress it."
+
+"Dear me. But doesn't it make him dusty, Mr. Biggs?"
+
+"A bit."
+
+"Couldn't Captain Kilmeny ride one of the bronchos?"
+
+"I've 'eard that the captain is a crack rider, none better in the harmy,
+Miss Fisher. 'E could ride the blawsted brute if it wouldn't 'ide its
+bloomin' 'ead between its legs."
+
+Moya, patrolling the willow walk in front of the Lodge, took this in
+with a chuckle.
+
+It was a still night, save only for the rushing waters of the river. The
+lamps of the sky had all been lit and were gleaming coldly millions of
+miles away. The shadowed moonlight in the trees offered a stage set to
+lowered lights.
+
+The thoughts of the girl had drifted to speculation about the
+transplanted countryman of hers whose personality had come to interest
+her so greatly. He had challenged her trust in him and she had responded
+with a pledge. He had not explained a single one of the suspicious
+circumstances against him. He had not taken her into his confidence, nor
+had he in so many words declared his innocence. She was glad he had told
+her nothing, had demanded her faith as a matter of course. It was part
+of her pride in him that she could believe without evidence. All the
+world would know he was not guilty after he had shown his proofs. It
+would be no test of friendship to stand by him then.
+
+A step sounded on the gravel behind her and an arm opened to let her
+hand slip round the elbow.
+
+"May I stroll out this dance with you, Miss Dwight?" Lord Farquhar asked
+formally, dropping into step with her.
+
+Moya and her guardian were kindred spirits. They never needed to
+explain themselves to each other. Both knew how to make-believe.
+
+"If you're not afraid of a scandal at being alone with me so far from a
+chaperone," the girl answered lightly.
+
+He burlesqued a sigh. "I'm only afraid there won't be any. It's the
+penalty of age, my dear. I can claim all sorts of privileges without
+making Verinder jealous."
+
+"Oh, Verinder," she scoffed.
+
+"Should I have said Kilmeny?" he asked.
+
+"I'll tell you a secret, guardy," whispered Moya gayly. "You're a
+hundred years younger than either of them."
+
+"I wish my glass told me so."
+
+"Fiddlesticks! Youth is in the heart. Mr. Verinder has never been young
+and Captain Kilmeny has forgotten how to be."
+
+"I fancy Ned would be willing to learn how again if he had the proper
+teacher."
+
+She gave his arm a little squeeze. "You dear old matchmaker."
+
+"Heaven forbid! I'm merely inquiring, my dear."
+
+"Oh, I see--your _in-loco-parentis_ duty."
+
+"Exactly. So it isn't going to be Ned?"
+
+She looked across the turbid moonlit river before she answered. "I don't
+think so."
+
+"Nor Verinder?"
+
+"Goodness, no!" A little ripple of laughter flowed from her lips before
+she added: "He's changed his mind. It's Joyce he wants now."
+
+Farquhar selected a cigar from the case. "Hm! Sure you didn't change it
+for him?"
+
+A dimple flashed into her cheeks. "I may have helped a little, but not
+half as much as Joyce."
+
+"That young woman is a born flirt," Lord Farquhar announced, his beard
+and the lower part of his face in the sudden glow of the lighted match.
+"Upon my word, I saw her making eyes at your highwayman the night we had
+him here."
+
+There was a moment's silence before she answered. "Anybody could see
+that he was interested in her."
+
+"It doesn't matter to me who interests him, but I can't have any of my
+wards being romantic over a Dick Turpin," he replied lightly.
+
+She was standing in the shadow, so that he could not see the dye sweep
+into her cheeks.
+
+"I'm afraid he is going to disappoint you. He's not a highwayman at
+all."
+
+"Did he tell you so?"
+
+"No. But I know it."
+
+"Looks to me as if he might make a good one. The fellow is cool as a
+cucumber and afraid of nothing on two legs or four."
+
+"You forget he is India's cousin."
+
+"No, I'm remembering that. His father had a devil of a temper and his
+mother was as wild as an unbroken colt when I met her."
+
+"They weren't thieves, were they?" she flashed.
+
+He gave her his frank smile. "You like this young man, Moya?"
+
+"Yes. Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Why not--if you don't like him too well?"
+
+"So that's why you came out here--sent by Lady Farquhar to scold me--and
+I thought you had come because you like to be with me."
+
+"One reason doesn't preclude the other."
+
+"I've known for several days she had it on her mind--ever since we saw
+Mr. Kilmeny on Sunbeam Creek."
+
+"Come; let us reason together," he invited cheerfully. "We'll sit on the
+end of the wharf and dangle our legs while your guardian finishes his
+cigar and does his duty by you."
+
+They compromised on a wire-woven seat under a cottonwood. Across the
+river two fishermen could be seen working down stream close to the
+opposite shore. The two were Verinder and Captain Kilmeny, though at
+that distance they were not recognizable.
+
+Lord Farquhar seemed in no hurry to begin, nor did Moya attempt to
+hasten him. His cigar glowed and ashed and glowed again before he spoke.
+
+"Odd how things work out, my dear. There across the river are two men
+who would like to marry you. Both are good matches. One is by way of
+being a bit of a bounder perhaps, but the other is as fine a fellow as
+any girl could look for--not brilliant, but no fool either, and as
+steady as a clock."
+
+A breath of wind lifted the edge of her white skirt. She followed the
+woman's instinct to tuck it safely under her before making demure
+answer. "Captain Kilmeny is his own certificate of merit. Any praise is
+surplusage."
+
+He shrugged. "That's the perversity of it. You see all his merits and
+they don't touch you."
+
+With a vivacious little turn that was wholly charming she turned merrily
+upon him. "Are you by any chance proposing for him, Lord Farquhar?"
+
+"Hasn't he proposed for himself?" her guardian asked bluntly.
+
+"I believe he has."
+
+"And you--didn't see it?"
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+"Sorry." He looked at the tip of his cigar and brushed away the ash.
+"Because he's a no end good sort."
+
+"You don't know that any better than I do. Don't think I can't see all
+the advantages of it. I do. I want to say 'Yes,' but--well, I can't.
+That's all."
+
+"On account of the other man?" he questioned gently.
+
+"I haven't mentioned any other man," she cried, her face in a flame.
+
+"No, I mentioned him. Devilish impudent of me, if you want to take it
+that way, Moya. But, then, as you've said, I'm _in loco_. Got to grub
+around and find out how you feel."
+
+"Lady Jim has been poking you up and telling you it's your duty," she
+told him in derision.
+
+"I daresay. I'm a lazy beggar. Always shirking when I can."
+
+"Lady Jim isn't lazy."
+
+"Di does her duty even when it isn't pleasant. Pity more of us don't."
+
+"Meaning that it is my unpleasant duty to marry Mr. Verinder's money?"
+
+"Hang Verinder and his money. I'm no end glad you can't stand him. Fact
+is, we didn't quite know how bad he was when we asked him to join us."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Well, sure your money isn't on the wrong horse, Moya? Mind, I don't say
+it is. I ask."
+
+"If you mean Mr. Kilmeny, there hasn't been a word between us you
+couldn't have heard yourself," the girl told him stiffly.
+
+"If my memory serves it didn't use to be so much a matter of words. What
+about your feelings? Di fancies----"
+
+"Of course she does. She's always fancying. That's the business of a
+chaperone. It's perfectly absurd," Moya flung back hotly.
+
+"Glad you see it that way. It wouldn't do, of course."
+
+She looked directly at him, a challenge in her stormy eyes. "The whole
+thing is ridiculous. The man hasn't given me a second thought. If you're
+going to warn anyone, it ought to be Joyce."
+
+Lord Farquhar looked straight at her. "Joyce has her eyes wide open. She
+can look out for herself."
+
+"And I can't?"
+
+"No, you can't--not when your feelings are involved. You're too
+impulsive, too generous."
+
+"It's all a storm in a teacup. I've only met him three times to talk
+with. He's been friendly--no more. But if he and I wanted to--not that
+there's the ghost of a chance of it, but if we did--I don't see why it
+wouldn't do."
+
+"Any number of reasons why it wouldn't. Marriage nowadays isn't entirely
+a matter of sentiment. You're an Englishwoman. He's an American, and
+will be to the end of the chapter."
+
+"I'm not English; I'm Irish--and the Irish make the best Americans," she
+told him sturdily.
+
+Farquhar ignored her protest. "His ways of thinking are foreign to
+yours, so are his habits of life. You're a delightful rebel, my dear,
+but you've got to come to heel in the end. All girls do. It's a rule of
+the game, and you'll have to accept it. No matter how captivating your
+highwayman may be--and upon my word I admire him tremendously--he is not
+your kind. He makes his own laws, and yours are made for you."
+
+"You're making one for me now, aren't you?" she demanded rebelliously.
+
+"Let's not put it so strong as that. I'm trying to persuade you to
+something of which you are fully persuaded already."
+
+"I'm not--not in the least. It's absurd to talk about it because the man
+hasn't the least idea of making love to me. But suppose he wanted to.
+Why shouldn't I listen to him? You tell me he doesn't have the same
+little conventions as we do. Thank heaven he hasn't. His mind is free.
+If that condemns him----"
+
+She broke off from sheer passionate inadequacy to express herself.
+
+"Those conventions are a part of your life, little girl. Can you imagine
+yourself sitting opposite him at breakfast for the rest of your natural
+days?"
+
+"You mean because he is a workingman, I suppose."
+
+"If you like. You would miss all the things to which you were used. Love
+in a cottage isn't practicable for young women brought up as you have
+been."
+
+"Then I've been brought up wrong. If I were fond enough of the man--but
+that's absurd. We're discussing an impossible case. I'll just say this,
+though. I've never met a man who would be as little likely to bore one."
+
+"Does his cousin bore you?"
+
+"No. Captain Kilmeny is interesting in his way too, but----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"His thoughts are all well regulated ones. He keeps to the proper beaten
+track." She flung up a hand impatiently. "Oh, I know he's perfect. I've
+never been allowed to forget that. He's too perfect. He would let me do
+anything I wanted to do. I would want a husband--if I ever have one--who
+would be strong enough to make me want to do whatever he said."
+
+Farquhar smiled as he flung his cigar into the river. "That works out
+better in theory than in practice, my dear. It's the little things that
+count in married life. What we need is a love well under control and
+friction eliminated."
+
+"That's not what I want. Give me my great moments, even if I have to pay
+for them."
+
+He understood perfectly her eager desire for the best life has to offer.
+What he was proposing for her was a tame second best. But it was safe,
+and the first rule of the modern marriage mart is to play the game safe.
+Yet he had a boyish errant impulse to tell her to cut loose and win
+happiness if she could. What restrained him, in addition to what he
+owed Lady Jim in the matter, was his doubt as to this young man's
+character.
+
+"There would be another thing to consider. Kilmeny is under a cloud--a
+pretty serious one. All the evidence connects him with this robbery.
+Grant that you believe him innocent. Still, a nice girl can't let her
+name be connected with that of a man suspected of a crime."
+
+"I'm sure he isn't guilty. I don't care what the evidence is."
+
+"'Fraid that's sentiment. It has a bad look for him."
+
+"Do we desert our friends when things have a bad look for them?"
+
+"Hm! Friends!"
+
+"I used that word," she told him stanchly.
+
+"But you've only talked with the man three times," he answered with a
+gleam of friendly malice in his eyes.
+
+"I've talked with Mr. Verinder forty times and I'm less his friend after
+each talk," she returned with energy.
+
+"Well, I daresay I've exaggerated the whole matter, my dear. I was just
+to give you a hint--no more."
+
+"You've done it, then."
+
+"Strikes me that I've done my duty in the matter."
+
+"You have--admirably," she scoffed.
+
+"It's up to Di now--if you should take a fancy for entertaining your
+highwayman again while you're fishing."
+
+"It's not likely that I'll ever see him again."
+
+"I daresay not." He rose and looked across the rushing water. "There's
+just one thing I stick out for. Regardless of your interest in him--no
+matter what might happen--you wouldn't let things get on another footing
+until he has proved his innocence--absolutely and beyond question."
+
+"Isn't that rather an unnecessary condition? I'm not in the habit of
+throwing myself at the heads of strangers who are merely casually polite
+to me."
+
+He took in her sweet supple slimness, the fine throat line beneath the
+piquant lifted chin which mocked his caution, the little imps of
+raillery that flashed from the dark live eyes. In spite of a passionate
+craving for the adventure of life she had a good deal of reticence and
+an abundant self-respect. He felt that he had said more than enough
+already.
+
+"Quite right, my dear. I withdraw my condition."
+
+"It's one I would insist upon myself--if there were any likelihood of
+any need of it--which there isn't."
+
+An easy-going man, he did not cross bridges till he came to them. His
+wife had persuaded him that Moya needed a talking to, but he was glad
+to be through with it.
+
+"Hang the scamp, anyhow!" he laughed. "Maybe he'll break his neck on one
+of those outlaw bronchos he's so fond of riding. Maybe they'll put him
+safely away in prison, where there is neither marrying nor giving in
+marriage. Maybe, as you say, he'll have the bad taste to prefer Joyce to
+my little Irish wild rose, in which case he'll be put in his place at
+the proper time."
+
+"It's even possible," she added with a murmur of half-embarrassed
+laughter, "that if he honored one with an offer--which it has never
+entered his head to do--one might regretfully decline with thanks."
+
+"Amen! In the meantime God lead your grace by the hand, as old Bacon
+says." He brought his heels together, bowed over her fingers, and kissed
+them with exaggerated old-fashioned gallantry.
+
+"Who's being romantic now?" she wanted to know gayly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MOYA'S HIGHWAYMAN
+
+
+Dinner at the Lodge was just finished. It was the one hour of the day
+when anything like formality obtained. Each one dropped into breakfast
+when he or she pleased. Luncheon rarely found them together. But Lady
+Jim insisted that dinner should be a civilized function. Unless there
+was to be night fishing the whole party usually adjourned from the
+dining-room to the river-front porch, where such members of it as
+desired might smoke the postprandial cigar or cigarette. To-night nobody
+cared to get out rod and line. In an hour or so they would return to the
+living-room for bridge.
+
+Voices drifted up the trail and presently riders came into sight. They
+halted among the trees, where one dismounted and came forward, his
+trailing spurs jingling as he walked.
+
+He bowed to his audience in general, and again and more particularly to
+Lady Farquhar.
+
+"Evening, ma'am. My name's Gill--sheriff of this county. I hate to
+trouble you, but my men haven't had a bite to eat since early this
+mo'ning. Think we could get a snack here? We'll not get to Gunnison till
+most eleven."
+
+Lady Farquhar rose. "I'll have the cook make something for you. How
+many?"
+
+"Six. Much obliged. Just anything that's handy."
+
+Sheriff Gill beckoned to the men in the trees, who tied their horses and
+presently came forward. All but one of them were heavily armed. That one
+walked between a 30-30 and a 32 special carbine. It was observable that
+the men with the rifles did not lift their eyes from him.
+
+Moya felt her heart flutter like that of a caged bird. The blood ebbed
+from her lips and she swayed in her seat. The prisoner was Jack Kilmeny.
+Farquhar, sitting beside the girl, let his hand fall upon hers with a
+comforting little pressure.
+
+"Steady!" his voice murmured so that she alone heard.
+
+Yet his own pulse stirred with the sheer melodrama of the scene. For as
+the man came forward it chanced that the luminous moonbeams haloed like
+a spotlight the blond head and splendid shoulders of the prisoner. Never
+in his gusty lifetime had he looked more the vagabond enthroned. He was
+coatless, and the strong muscles sloped beautifully from the brown
+throat. A sardonic smile was on the devil-may-care face, and those who
+saw that smile labeled it impudent, debonair, or whimsical, as fancy
+pleased.
+
+"By Jove, the fellow's a natural-born aristocrat," thought Farquhar, the
+most democratic of men.
+
+Jack Kilmeny nodded with cool equality toward Farquhar and the captain,
+ignored Verinder, and smiled genially at India. For Moya his look had a
+special meaning. It charged her with the duty of faith in him. Somehow
+too it poured courage into her sinking heart.
+
+"Afraid an engagement at Gunnison with Sheriff Gill won't let me stop
+for any poker to-night," he told his host.
+
+Farquhar was on the spot to meet him in the same spirit. "Verinder will
+be glad of that. I fancy my pocketbook too will be fatter to-morrow
+morning."
+
+Biggs appeared to take the newly arrived party in charge. As they
+started to follow him the prisoner came face to face with Joyce, who was
+just coming out of the house. She looked at the young miner and at the
+rifles, and her eyes dilated. Under the lowered lights of evening she
+seemed to swim in a tide of beauty rich and mellow. The young man caught
+his breath at the sheer pagan loveliness of her.
+
+"What is it?" she asked in a low, sweet, tremulous voice.
+
+His assurance fled. The bravado was sponged from his face instantly. He
+stared at her in silence from fascinated eyes until he moved forward at
+the spur of an insistent arm at his elbow.
+
+India wondered how Lady Jim would dispose of the party. Jack Kilmeny
+might be a criminal, but he happened to be their cousin. It would hardly
+do to send him to the servants' quarters to eat. And where he ate the
+sheriff and his posse would likewise have to dine.
+
+The young woman need not have concerned herself. Lady Farquhar knew
+enough of the West and its ways not to make a mistake. Such food as
+could be prepared at short notice was served in the dining-room.
+
+Having washed the dust of travel from himself, the sheriff returned to
+the porch to apologize once more for having made so much trouble.
+
+Farquhar diverted him from his regrets by asking him how they had made
+the capture.
+
+"I ain't claiming much credit for getting him," Gill admitted. "This
+here was the way of it. A kid had been lost from Lander's ranch--strayed
+away in the hills, y'understand. She was gone for forty-eight hours, and
+everybody in the district was on the hunt for her. Up there the
+mountains are full of pockets. Looked like they weren't going to git
+her. Soon it would be too late, even if they did find her. Besides,
+there are a heap of mountain lions up in that country. I tell you her
+folks were plumb worried."
+
+Moya, listening to every word as she leaned forward, spoke vividly. "And
+Mr. Kilmeny found her."
+
+The sheriff's surprised eyes turned to her. "That's right, ma'am. He
+did. I dunno how you guessed it, but you've rung the bell. He found her
+and brought her down to the ranch. It just happened we had drapped in
+there ten minutes before. So we gathered him in handy as the pocket in
+your shirt. Before he could move we had the crawl on him."
+
+The sheriff retired to the dining-room, whence came presently snatches
+of cheerful talk between the prisoner and his captors. In their company
+Jack Kilmeny was frankly a Western frontiersman.
+
+"You passed close to me Wednesday night at the fork of Rainbow above the
+J K ranch. I was lying on a ledge close to the trail. You discussed
+whether to try Deer Creek or follow Rainbow to its headwaters," the
+miner said.
+
+"That was sure one on us. Hadn't been for the kid, I don't reckon we
+ever would have took you," a deputy confessed.
+
+"What beats me is why you weren't a hundred miles away in Routt County
+over in yore old stamping ground," another submitted.
+
+"I had my reasons. I wasn't looking to be caught anyhow. Now you've got
+me you want to watch me close," the prisoner advised.
+
+"We're watching you. Don't make any mistake about that and try any fool
+break," Gill answered, quite undisturbed.
+
+"He's the coolest hand I ever heard," Farquhar said to the party on the
+porch. "If I were a highwayman I'd like to have him for a partner."
+
+"He's not a highwayman, I tell you," corrected Moya.
+
+"I hope he isn't, but I'm afraid he is," India confided in a whisper.
+"For whatever else he is, Jack Kilmeny is a man."
+
+"Very much so," the captain nodded, between troubled puffs of his pipe.
+
+"And I'm going to stand by him," announced his sister with a determined
+toss of her pretty head.
+
+Moya slipped an arm quickly around her waist. She was more grateful for
+this support than she could say. It meant that India at least had
+definitely accepted the American as a relative with the obligation that
+implied. Both girls waited for Ned Kilmeny to declare himself, for,
+after all, he was the head of the family. He smoked in silence for a
+minute, considering the facts in his stolid deliberate fashion.
+
+The excitement of the girl he loved showed itself in the dusky eyes
+sparkling beneath the soft mass of blue-black hair, in the glow of
+underlying blood that swept into her cheeks. She hoped--oh, how she
+hoped!--that the officer would stand by his cousin. In her heart she
+knew that if he did not--no matter how right his choice might be in
+principle--she never would like him so well again. He was a man who
+carried in his face and in his bearing the note of fineness, of personal
+distinction, but if he were to prove a formalist at heart, if he were
+going to stickle for an assurance of his kinsman's innocence before he
+came to the prisoner's aid, Moya would have no further use for him.
+
+When the sheriff presently came out Captain Kilmeny asked him if he
+might have a word with the prisoner.
+
+"Sure. Anything you want to say to him."
+
+The English officer drew his cousin aside and with some embarrassment
+tendered to his cousin the use of his purse in the event it might be
+needed for the defense.
+
+Jack looked at him steadily with hard unflinching eyes. "Why are you
+offering this, captain?"
+
+"I don't quite take you."
+
+"I mean, what's your reason? Don't like it to get out that you have a
+cousin in the pen, is that it? Anxious to avoid a family scandal?" he
+asked, almost with a sneer.
+
+The captain flushed, but before he could answer India flamed out. "You
+might have the decency to be ashamed of that, Jack Kilmeny."
+
+Her cousin looked at the girl gravely, then back at her lean,
+clean-faced brother. "I am. Beg your pardon, captain. As for your offer,
+I would accept it if there were any need. But there isn't. The charges
+against me will fall flat."
+
+"Deuced glad to hear it. Miss Dwight has just been telling us it would
+be all right."
+
+India looked straight at Jack out of the steel-blue eyes that were so
+like his own. "I wasn't so sure of it myself, but Moya was. Nothing
+could shake her. She's a good friend."
+
+"I had it sized up about that way," the miner replied. "But I've a
+notion Miss Kilmeny will stand the acid too. Anyhow, I'm much obliged to
+her."
+
+The prisoner shook hands with both of his cousins, lifted a
+broad-brimmed gray felt hat from the rack, and delivered himself to the
+sheriff.
+
+"All right, Gill."
+
+India gave a little exclamation and moved toward the hatrack. Her hand
+fell upon a second hat, similar in appearance to the first, but much
+more worn and dust-stained. She opened her lips to speak and closed them
+without saying a word. For her eyes had met those of Moya and read there
+a warning.
+
+Jack Kilmeny nodded a brisk farewell to Farquhar, smiled at Miss Dwight,
+and moved with his guards to the clump of trees where the horses had
+been left. His eyes had looked for Joyce, but she was not at that moment
+in sight.
+
+The last faint beat of the retreating hoofs died away. An awkward
+constraint settled upon the party left at the Lodge. It was impossible
+to discuss the situation openly, yet it was embarrassing to ignore the
+subject in the thoughts of all. After a decent interval they began to
+drop away, one by one, from the group. India followed Moya, and found
+that young woman in her room.
+
+"What are you hiding?" Miss Kilmeny asked quickly.
+
+Moya produced from her hatbox a gray sombrero and put it on the table.
+"I didn't know it was you--thought it might be Lady Jim," she explained.
+
+"Why wasn't I to tell Jack Kilmeny that he had taken Ned's hat by
+mistake?" India wanted to know.
+
+"Because it wasn't by mistake."
+
+"Not by mistake! What would he want with another man's hat?"
+
+"I'm not sure about that. Perhaps he _didn't want his own_. You see, I
+had started myself to tell him about the mistake, but his eyes asked me
+plain as words not to speak."
+
+"But why--why?" India frowned at the hat, her active brain busy. "It
+would be absurd for him to want Ned's hat. He must have had some reason,
+though."
+
+"Don't they search prisoners before they lock them up?" Moya asked
+abruptly.
+
+India shook her head. "I don't know. Do they?"
+
+"Of course they do." Moya's eyes began to shine. "Now suppose there is
+something about that hat he didn't want them to see."
+
+"How do you mean?" India picked up the hat and turned it round slowly.
+"It's worn and a bit disreputable, but he wouldn't care for that."
+
+Moya found a pair of scissors in her work basket. With these she ripped
+off the outer ribbon. This told her nothing. Next she examined the
+inside. Under the sweat pad was a folded slip of paper. She waved it in
+excitement.
+
+"What did I tell you?"
+
+"But--if he is innocent--what could there be he wanted to hide?"
+
+"I don't know." Moya unfolded the paper enough to see that there was
+writing in it. "Do you think we ought to read this?"
+
+"I don't know," India repeated in her turn. "Perhaps it may be a message
+to you."
+
+Moya's face lighted. "Of course that's it. He wanted to tell us
+something when the rest were not there, so he used this method."
+
+Three cramped lines were penciled on the torn fragment of paper.
+
+    At wharf above camp.
+    Twelve steps below big rock.
+    In gunny sack three yards from shore.
+
+Two pairs of puzzled eyes looked into each other.
+
+"What can it mean?" India asked.
+
+"I don't know, unless----"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Can it be a direction for finding something?"
+
+"But what? And why should it be hidden in his hat? Besides, he would
+have no chance to put it in there after he was captured."
+
+"Then perhaps it isn't a message to me at all."
+
+"That's what we must find out. 'At wharf above camp.' That probably
+means his fishing camp."
+
+"What are you going to do, India?"
+
+"I'm going to get Ned to help me find that gunny sack."
+
+Moya found herself trembling. She did not know why. It was not doubt of
+her reckless friend, but none the less she was in a panic.
+
+"Do you think we'd better?"
+
+Miss Kilmeny looked at her in surprise. In general nobody came to
+decision more quickly than Moya.
+
+"Of course. How else can we tell whether it is something he wants us to
+do for him?"
+
+"When shall we look?"
+
+"The sooner the better--to-night," answered the other girl immediately.
+"The wharf above the camp. It's not a quarter of an hour from here. I'll
+not sleep till I know what he means."
+
+"Lady Jim," Moya reminded her.
+
+"She needn't know. She can't object if we take Ned and go fishing for an
+hour."
+
+Moya consulted her watch. "They'll be gathering for bridge pretty soon.
+Let's go now. We can be back in time for supper."
+
+"Get into your fishing togs. I'll get Ned and we'll meet you on the west
+porch in a quarter of an hour."
+
+Within the appointed time the three slipped away down the river bank
+trail as silently as conspirators. The captain was rather inclined to
+pooh-pooh the whole thing, but he was not at all sorry to share an
+adventure that brought him into a closer relationship with Moya Dwight.
+
+"Must be this wharf," India said presently, as a bulky shadow loomed out
+of the darkness.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder. Here's a big rock just below it. Didn't the paper say
+something about a rock?" asked the captain.
+
+"Twelve steps below big rock, it says."
+
+The soldier paced off the distance. "What now?"
+
+"Three yards from the shore," called his sister. "There should be a
+gunny sack, whatever that is."
+
+"Afraid he's spoofing us," Kilmeny said with a laugh as he moved out in
+his waders against the current. "Here I am. What's the next direction?"
+
+India giggled. She was Irish enough to get the humorous side of things
+and could not help being frivolous even when she was greatly interested.
+"Now you look over your left shoulder at the moon and wish."
+
+Her brother's high voice cut in. "I say. My foot's kicking something.
+Wait a jiff."
+
+He braced his feet, dived suddenly down with one arm till his face
+touched the water, and grappled with his fingers for a hold on something
+lying between two rocks at the bottom. When he straightened again it was
+with an effort. He did not attempt to raise his burden from the stream,
+but waded ashore with it. Using both hands, he dragged his find to land.
+
+"It's a sack," India cried excitedly.
+
+The captain's eyes met those of Moya. His face was grave, but she was
+white to the lips. Both of them felt sure of what they would find in the
+sack.
+
+"Open it," she told him tensely.
+
+With his pocketknife Kilmeny cut the string that tied the sack. He drew
+out a heavy valise so full that it gaped. Silver and gold coins, as well
+as bills, filled it to the mouth. They had found the money stolen from
+the treasurer of the Gunnison County Fair association.
+
+All three of them were sick at heart. Jack Kilmeny then was guilty,
+after all. The message in the hat had not been intended for them, but
+had been merely a note of identification of the spot. He had taken the
+captain's hat merely because he did not want the officers to find the
+directions under the sweat pad. He had in essence lied to Moya and to
+the cousins who had offered to stand shoulder to shoulder with him in
+his trouble.
+
+To Moya the next hour was a nightmare. They returned to the Lodge and
+slipped into the house by way of a French window opening upon the
+deserted north porch. Kilmeny hid the sack of treasure in his trunk and
+divested himself of his fishing clothes. Presently he joined Moya and
+his sister on the front porch, where shortly they were discovered by
+Verinder in search of a fourth at bridge.
+
+India, knowing how greatly her friend was shaken, volunteered to fill
+the table and maneuvered Verinder back into the living-room with her.
+The millionaire had vaguely the sense of a conspiracy against him and
+resented it, even though of late he had been veering from Moya to Joyce
+in his attentions.
+
+Captain Kilmeny, left alone with the girl of his dreams, wisely said
+nothing. He was himself indignant, his family pride stung to the quick.
+His cousin was not only a thief but a liar. Born of a race of soldiers,
+with the traditions of family and of the army back of him for
+generations, the latter offense was the greater of the two. He
+understood something of how Miss Dwight felt. She had let herself become
+greatly interested in this vagabond cousin of his. Openly she had
+championed his cause. Now her feelings were wounded, her pride hurt, and
+her anger ablaze. The fellow's offense against her had been flagrant.
+
+So far the captain had guessed correctly. Moya writhed like a bruised
+woodland creature. Her friendship had been abused. She had been as
+credulous as a simple country wench, while he no doubt had been laughing
+up his sleeve at her all the time. No longer had she any doubt as to his
+guilt. She visualized the hurried run for safety to camp, the swift
+disposal of the treasure in the river because of the close pursuit. When
+she lived over again that scene on Sunbeam the girl flogged her soul
+like a penitent. As one grinds defiantly on an ulcerated tooth, so she
+crushed her pride and dragged it in the dust.
+
+But the wound was deeper even than this. To give herself in friendship
+impulsively was her temperament, though not many were judged worthy of
+such giving. This blue-eyed scamp had won her as no man ever had before.
+She had seen him through a glamour. Now his character stood stripped in
+its meanness. Her sweet trust was crushed. In the reaction that was upon
+her she craved rest and safety. No longer had she any confidence in her
+own judgment. Against the advice of her friends she had been wayward and
+headstrong, so sure that she knew best.
+
+Kilmeny, sitting beside her in the deep shadows cast by the wild
+cucumber vines, became aware that she was weeping silently. His heart
+bled for her. He had known her always buoyant, gallant as Galahad,
+vibrant of joy to the finger tips.
+
+"I say, don't," he pleaded. It was impossible for him to voice
+adequately his feelings. Greatly daring, he let an arm rest across the
+shoulders that were being racked by suppressed _pianissimo_ sobs.
+
+"You mustn't, you know. I can't stand it." And, again, "Please don't."
+
+She gulped down the lump in her throat and turned upon him filmy eyes,
+the lashes of which were tangled with tears. This fine strong soldier
+represented the haven of rest toward which she was being driven. Had she
+never met his American cousin she knew that she would probably have
+accepted him in the end. The swift impulse swept her to anchor her craft
+for life in a safe harbor. She had tried rebellion, and that had left
+her spent and beaten. What she wanted now was safety, a rest from the
+turmoil of emotion.
+
+"Do you still ... want me?" she asked lifelessly.
+
+He could not on the instant take her meaning. Then, "Want you!" he
+cried in a low voice no words could have expressed fully. "Want you? Oh,
+my dear!"
+
+"You know I don't love you ... not in one way," she told him naively.
+"Lady Jim says that will come. I don't know. Perhaps you won't want to
+take the risk."
+
+She could see the desire of her leap to his honest eyes. "By God, I'll
+take my chance," he cried.
+
+"You'll give me all the time I want--not push me too hard?"
+
+"You shall set your own time."
+
+Her dusky head was leaning wearily against the back of a wicker porch
+chair. From sheer fatigue her eyes fluttered shut. Her lover could see
+the round bird-like throat swell as she swallowed the lump that had
+gathered. Pity for her and love of her rose in him like a flood. He
+would have given anything to wrap her in his arms and fight away her
+troubles. But he knew it would be months before he could win the right
+to do this.
+
+"Would you mind if ... if we didn't tell the others just yet?"
+
+"It shall be as you say, Moya, dear."
+
+She nodded languid thanks. "You're good. I ... I think I'll go to bed.
+I'm so tired."
+
+He kissed the tips of her fingers and she vanished round the corner of
+the house.
+
+Kilmeny sat down again and looked for long across the moonlit river.
+His sweetheart had promised to marry him, but in how strange a fashion.
+He was to be her husband some day, but he was not yet her lover by a
+good deal. His imagination fitted another man to that role, and there
+rose before him the strong brown face of his cousin with its mocking
+eyes and devil-may-care smile.
+
+His promised wife! He had despaired of winning her, and she had crept to
+him as a hurt child does to its mother. There was no exultation in his
+heart. Poor child! How sad and tired her eyes had been.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BAD PENNY AGAIN
+
+
+Verinder strolled down to the river bank, where Joyce was fishing from
+the shore in a tentative fashion.
+
+"I say, Miss Seldon, aren't you breaking the Sabbath?" he asked from the
+bank above, smiling down upon her with an attempt at archness.
+
+She flashed at him over her shoulder a smile that had all the allure of
+lovely youth. "I'm only bending it. I haven't caught a single fish."
+
+"Bending it! Oh, I say, that's rather rippin', you know."
+
+She nodded her golden head. "Thanks."
+
+"Casting is a horrid bore. You should be a fisher of men," he told her
+fatuously.
+
+"If I could be sure I wouldn't catch one. But if I happened to, what
+would I do with him?"
+
+"Do with him! Why, it depends on who you catch. If he's undersize unhook
+him gently and throw him back into the river. What!"
+
+The gay smile, flashed sideways at him, was a challenge. "But it isn't
+always so easy to unhook them, I'm told."
+
+"Not if one doesn't want to."
+
+"You're telling me that I'm a flirt, aren't you?" she said suspiciously.
+
+"I can't tell you anything along that line you don't know already."
+
+"I've a good mind to get angry," she flung back, laughing.
+
+"Don't do that. If it would help I can tell you a lot of nice things I
+think about you. My word, yes!"
+
+Joyce shot one swift glance at him and saw that he was on the verge of
+waxing sentimental. That would never do. It was on the cards that she
+might have to marry Dobyans Verinder but she did not want him making
+love to her.
+
+"Please don't take the trouble. It's really a matter of no moment."
+
+The young woman made another cast.
+
+"To you."
+
+"I was thinking about me."
+
+"You usually are, aren't you?"
+
+She looked up with surprised amusement. Resentment had made him bold.
+This was the first spark of spirit she had shaken out of him and she had
+made him the victim of many moods.
+
+"But I don't blame you for thinking about the most interesting person
+you know. I think about you a lot myself. You're really rippin', you
+know."
+
+Joyce groaned in spirit. He did that sort of thing as gracefully as a
+bear danced. To create a diversion she whipped back her line for a cast
+so that the flies snapped close to his ear.
+
+"I say, be a bit careful," Verinder suggested.
+
+"Oh, did I hook you?" she asked carelessly.
+
+"I've been on your line for weeks."
+
+"You'd better whisper it. Moya might hear," she advised roguishly.
+
+Verinder flushed. The transfer of his attentions was still a sore
+subject with him. He hoped it would be generally understood that he had
+given up Miss Dwight of his own choice. He did not want it to get out
+that he had been jilted.
+
+"The whole world is welcome to hear it. I'd advertise it in the _Times_
+if it would do any good."
+
+"I believe you are impudent," laughed the beauty.
+
+"I know I'm imprudent."
+
+"Oh!" She carefully dropped her leader in the riffles. "There's no law
+keeping you in this neighborhood, you know. Try India for a change."
+
+"There's nothing to keep the trout on the line--except the hook."
+
+Her smile told of lazy but amiable derision. "It's a great pity about
+you."
+
+"Awf'ly glad you feel so. Some poet chap said that pity is akin to
+love."
+
+"I think it would do you good to take a long walk, Mr. Verinder."
+
+"With Miss Seldon?" he wanted to know cautiously.
+
+"Alone," she told him severely. "It would be a rest."
+
+"A rest for me--or for you?"
+
+The dimples flashed into her soft cheeks again. "For both of us,
+perhaps."
+
+"Thanks. It's rather jolly here." He put his hands in his trousers
+pockets and leaned against a tree.
+
+"Hope you'll enjoy it. I'm going to find Moya." Miss Seldon reeled up,
+put her rod against the tree, and sauntered off with the lissom grace
+that was hers.
+
+Verinder woke up. "Let me come too. On second thoughts I find I do need
+a walk."
+
+She looked back at him saucily over her shoulder. "You may come if you
+won't talk until you're spoken to."
+
+"Done, by Jove!"
+
+They followed the trail a stone's throw in silence.
+
+"Miss Dwight's always going off by herself. Seems to me she's a bit off
+her feed," Verinder suggested.
+
+Joyce was amused. For a man who wanted it understood that only one girl
+in the world mattered to him he still appeared to take a good deal of
+interest in Moya.
+
+"Seems dreamy and--er--depressed. What!" he continued.
+
+"Perhaps she is in love," Joyce let herself suggest wickedly.
+
+"I've thought of that, but 'pon my word! I can't think of a man."
+
+"Why not Mr. Verinder?"
+
+His eyeglass ogled her to make sure he was not being made game of, but
+the lovely face was very innocent.
+
+"Can't be," he demurred with conventional denial.
+
+"Captain Kilmeny, then."
+
+"Hardly. I don't think he's quite her style of man."
+
+"Perhaps with his cousin, the highwayman."
+
+"Good heavens, no!"
+
+She took on a look of horrified suspicion. "You don't think--surely it
+couldn't be--Oh, I do hope it isn't Lord Farquhar."
+
+He stared at her through his monocle with his mouth open, then
+discovered that he had been sold as the laughter rippled into her face.
+
+"Oh, I say! Jolly good one, that. Lord Farquhar, by Jove!" Yet his
+laughter rang flat. It always made him angry to find that they were
+"spoofing" him. He didn't like to be "got" in the beastly traps these
+girls were always laying for him.
+
+"There's Moya now--and there's a man with her," Joyce announced.
+
+"By Gad, it's the highwayman!" Verinder gasped.
+
+It was, though strictly speaking Jack Kilmeny was not yet with her,
+since she was still unaware of his presence. Moya was sitting on a mossy
+rock with a magazine in her hand, but she was not reading. By the look
+of her she was daydreaming, perhaps of the man who was moving
+noiselessly toward her over the bowlders.
+
+Before she heard him he was close upon her. She looked around, and with
+a little cry got to her feet and stared at him, her hand on her fast
+beating heart.
+
+Joyce waited to see no more.
+
+"No business of ours," she announced to Verinder, and, without regard to
+his curiosity or her own, turned heel and marshaled him from the field.
+
+"You!" Moya cried.
+
+Kilmeny bowed. "The bad penny turned up again, Miss Dwight."
+
+Scorn of him flashed in her dark eyes. She stood straight and rigid, but
+in spite of herself she breathed fast.
+
+"You've forgotten your promise. You've lost faith again," he charged.
+
+His impudence stirred contemptuous anger. "I know you now, sir," she
+told him with fine contempt.
+
+"And you promised to believe in me." He said it quietly, with just a
+touch of bitterness in the reproach of his wistful voice.
+
+The first hint of startled doubt came into her eyes. It was as if he had
+breathed into a marble statue the pulse of life. He had known her vivid
+as a thrush in song, a dainty creature of fire and dew. She stood now
+poised as it were on the edge of hope.
+
+"How could I believe when I found your guilt on you? What right have you
+to ask it?"
+
+"So you found the paper in the hat, did you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Certain about my guilt this time, are you?"
+
+He said it almost with a sneer, but nothing could crush the resurgent
+glow in her heart. Against the perilous and emotional climax which was
+growing on her she set her will in vain. Why was it that the mere
+presence of this man called to her so potently and shook her confidence
+in his guilt?
+
+"We found the money," she explained, thinking to confound him.
+
+"I guessed that. It was gone when I went to look for it this morning.
+I've come for it now."
+
+His assurance amazed her. "Come for it!" she repeated. "It isn't here."
+
+"No, I didn't expect to find it in your purse. But it is at the Lodge."
+
+"No."
+
+"Where, then?"
+
+"I shan't tell you. The money will be returned to those from whom it was
+stolen."
+
+He looked at her with hard, narrowed eyes. "It will be returned, will
+it? When?"
+
+"To-day. Within a few hours."
+
+"Who is going to return it?"
+
+Moya had it on the tip of her tongue to tell, but pulled up in time. "I
+think we'll not go into that."
+
+The American looked at his watch. The hands showed the hour to be 2:30.
+If the money was to be returned that day someone must already be on the
+way with it. He had seen his cousin, Captain Kilmeny, take the Gunnison
+road in a trap not half an hour earlier.
+
+"So the captain is taking it back to-day?" he mused aloud, wary eyes on
+Moya's face.
+
+A startled expression leaped to her countenance. She had told more than
+she had intended. "I didn't say so."
+
+"I say so."
+
+Beneath his steady gaze her lashes fell. He nodded, sure that he had
+guessed correctly.
+
+"I intended to have a talk with you and straighten out some things," he
+went on. "But I find I haven't time now. We'll postpone it till
+to-morrow. I'll meet you here at ten o'clock in the morning."
+
+"No," she told him.
+
+The wave of hope had ebbed in her. Given the opportunity to explain the
+evidence against him, he had cared more to find out what they were doing
+with the stolen money. He had no time to save his good name.
+
+"Ten in the morning. Remember. It's important. I want to see you alone.
+If I'm not on time wait for me."
+
+That was his last word. He bowed, turned away almost at a run, and was
+lost in the small willows. Presently she heard the sound of a galloping
+horse. A minute later she caught a glimpse of it disappearing up Red
+Rock canon. He was following the cutoff trail that led to Gunnison.
+
+She wondered what was taking him away so abruptly. He had meant to stop,
+then had changed his mind. He had told her calmly she must meet him here
+to-morrow, and if he were late for the appointment she must wait. His
+impudence was enough to stagger belief. She would show him about that.
+If he wanted to see her he must come to the Lodge and face Lady Jim.
+Even then she would not see him. Why should she, since he was what he
+was?
+
+Ah, but that was the crux of the whole matter! To look at him was to
+feel that whatever his faults they were not despicable ones. He was
+alive, so very much alive, and the look of him was that which an honest
+man should have. Had he proved his innocence and been released? Or had
+he broken prison, an alternative of which he was quite capable? And,
+guilty or innocent, what could be the explanation of his extraordinary
+demand that she should turn over to him the stolen money?
+
+He had found her dumb and stricken with many hours of brooding over his
+guilt. At least he left her quick with questionings. She divined again
+the hint of a mystery. Something deeper than reason told her that the
+unraveling of it would prove him no villain.
+
+One immediate duty alone confronted her. She must confess to Lady
+Farquhar that she had met and talked with him again. It was likely that
+she would be well scolded, but it was characteristic of her that she
+preferred to walk straight to punishment and get it over with. No doubt
+she had been too free with this engaging scamp. The rules of her set
+prescribed a straight and narrow road in which she must walk. The open
+fields beyond the hedges might blossom with flowers, but there could be
+no dalliance in them for her. She was to know only such people as had
+the password, only those trimmed and trained till there was no
+individuality left in them. From birth she had been a rebel, but an
+impotent one. Each revolt had ended in submission to the silken chains
+of her environment. Fret as she might, none the less she was as much a
+caged creature as Lady Jim's canary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"AN OUT AND OUT ROTTER"
+
+
+Jack strode through the young alders to his horse, swung to the saddle
+without touching the stirrups, and was off instantly at a canter. He
+rode fast, evidently with a direct driving purpose to reach a particular
+destination. The trail was a rough and rocky one, but he took it
+recklessly. His surefooted broncho scrambled catlike up steep inclines
+and slid in clouds of dust down breakneck hillsides of loose rubble. In
+and out he wound, across gulches and over passes, following always as
+nearly a bee line as was possible.
+
+An hour of rapid travel brought him to the Gunnison road. He swung to
+the ground and examined the dusty roadbed. Apparently he was satisfied,
+for he took his sweat-stained horse back into the brush and tied it to a
+cottonwood. From its case beside the saddle he drew a rifle. He retraced
+his own steps and selected carefully a place among the thick bushes by
+the roadside. With his pocketknife he cut eye-holes in the bandanna
+handkerchief that had been round his neck and tied it over his face in
+such a way as to conceal his features entirely. Then he carefully
+emptied from the rifle all the cartridges it contained and dropped them
+into his pocket.
+
+These preparations made, he sat down and waited. There came to him very
+soon the rumble of wheels. Presently a one-horse trap appeared at a
+curve of the road. Captain Kilmeny was the driver.
+
+Jack rose noiselessly and thrust the barrel of his rifle through the
+bushes. He was within six feet of the road and he waited until his
+cousin was almost abreast of him.
+
+"Throw up your hands!"
+
+The captain knew in an instant what he was up against. A masked man with
+a rifle in his hands could mean only one thing. Ned Kilmeny was no fool.
+He knew when to fight and when to surrender. His hands went into the
+air.
+
+"Kick that rifle into the road--with your foot, not with your hands."
+
+The Englishman did as he was told.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded, looking sharply at the masked bandit.
+
+"I want that satchel beside you. Drop it out."
+
+Again the officer obeyed orders. He asked no questions and made no
+comment.
+
+"There's room to turn here by backing. Hit the grit for the Lodge."
+
+After he had faced about, Ned Kilmeny had one word to say before
+leaving.
+
+"I know who you are, and there's just one name for your kind--you're an
+out and out rotter."
+
+"It's a difference of opinion that makes horse races, captain," answered
+the masked man promptly.
+
+Ned Kilmeny, as he drove back to the Lodge, was sick at heart. He came
+of a family of clean, honest gentlemen. Most of them had been soldiers.
+Occasionally one had gone to the devil as this young cousin of his had
+done. But there was something in this whole affair so contemptible that
+it hurt his pride. The theft itself was not the worst thing. The miner
+had traded on their faith in him. He had lied to them, had made a mock
+of their friendly offers to help him. Even the elements of decency
+seemed to be lacking in him.
+
+India and Moya were on the veranda when the captain drove up. One glance
+at his grim face told them something had gone wrong.
+
+"I've been held up," he said simply.
+
+"Held up!"
+
+"Robbed--with a rifle within reach of my hand all the time."
+
+"But--how?" gasped India.
+
+Moya, white to the lips, said nothing. A premonition of the truth
+clutched icily at her heart.
+
+"A masked man stopped me just as I swung round a bend about three miles
+from Gunnison. He ordered me to throw out the satchel with the money. I
+did as I was told."
+
+"He had you covered with a weapon?" asked India.
+
+"With a rifle--yes."
+
+"Did you--recognize him?" Moya's throat was dry, so that her question
+came almost in a whisper.
+
+The captain's eyes met hers steadily. "He stayed in the bushes, so that
+I didn't see his body well. He was masked."
+
+"But you know who it was. Tell me."
+
+Ned Kilmeny was morally certain of the identity of the robber. He could
+all but swear to the voice, and surely there were not two men in the
+county with such a free and gallant poise of the head.
+
+"I couldn't take oath to the man."
+
+"It was your cousin." Moya was pale to the lips.
+
+The officer hesitated. "I'm not prepared to say who the man was."
+
+The pulse in her throat beat fast. Her hand was clutching the arm of a
+chair so tightly that the knuckles stood out white and bloodless.
+
+"You know better. It was Jack Kilmeny," she charged.
+
+"I could tell you only my opinion," he insisted.
+
+"And I know all about it." Moya came to time with her confession
+promptly, in the fearless fashion characteristic of her. "It was I that
+sent him to you. It was I that betrayed you to him."
+
+India set her lips to a soundless whistle. Her brother could not keep
+out of his brown face the amazement he felt.
+
+"I don't wonder you look like that," Moya nodded, gulping down her
+distress. "You can't think any worse of me than I do of myself."
+
+"Nonsense! If you told him you had a reason. What was it?" India asked,
+a little sharply.
+
+"No reason that justifies me. He took me by surprise. He had come to get
+the stolen money and I told him we were returning it to the Fair
+association. He guessed the rest. Almost at once he left. I saw him take
+the canon road for Gunnison."
+
+"You weren't to blame at all," the captain assured her, adding with a
+rueful smile: "He didn't take you any more by surprise than he did me. I
+hadn't time to reach for the rifle."
+
+India's Irish eyes glowed with contemptuous indignation. She used the
+same expression that Ned had. "He must be an out and out rotter. To
+think he'd rob Ned after what he offered to do for him. I'm through with
+him."
+
+Her brother said nothing, but in his heart he agreed. There was nothing
+to be done for a fellow whose sense of decency was as far gone as that.
+
+Moya too kept silence. Her heart was seething with scorn for this
+handsome scamp who had put this outrage upon them all. It was bad enough
+to be a thief, but to this he had added deception, falsehood, and gross
+ingratitude. Nor did the girl's contempt spare herself. Neither warning
+nor advice--and Lady Jim had been prodigal of both--had availed to open
+her eyes about the Westerner. She had been as foolish over him as a
+schoolgirl in the matter of a matinee idol. That she would have to lash
+herself for her folly through many sleepless hours of the night was a
+certainty.
+
+Meanwhile she went through the part required of her. At dinner she
+tossed the conversational ball back and forth as deftly as usual, and
+afterward she played her accustomed game of bridge. Fortunately, Kilmeny
+was her partner. Sometimes when her thoughts wandered the game suffered,
+but the captain covered her mistakes without comment. She could almost
+have loved him for the gentle consideration he showed. Why must she
+needs be so willful? Why couldn't she have given her heart to this
+gallant gentleman instead of to the reckless young scoundrel whom she
+hardly knew?
+
+Before the party broke up a ride was arranged for next morning to the
+Devil's Slide, a great slab of rock some miles away. The young people
+were to have an early breakfast and get started before the sun was hot.
+For this reason the sitting at auction was short.
+
+But though Moya reached her room before midnight, it was not until day
+was beginning to break that she fell into a troubled sleep. She tossed
+through the long hours and lived over every scene that had passed
+between her and Jack Kilmeny. It was at an end. She would never see him
+again. She would ride with the others to the Devil's Slide and he would
+come to the appointment he had made to find her not there. He would go
+away, and next day she would leave with the rest of her party for the
+Big Bend mining country, where Verinder and Lord Farquhar were heavily
+interested in some large gold producers. That chapter of her life would
+be closed. She told herself that it was best so. Her love for a man of
+this stamp could bring no happiness to her. Moreover, she had taken an
+irretrievable step in betrothing herself to Captain Kilmeny. Over and
+over again she went over the arguments that marshaled themselves so
+strongly in favor of the loyal lover who had waited years to win her.
+Some day she would be glad of the course she had chosen. She persuaded
+herself of this while she sobbed softly into the hot pillows.
+
+When Fisher wakened her to dress in time for the early breakfast Moya
+felt very reluctant to join the others. She would have to laugh and talk
+and make merry, and all the time she would be miserably unhappy. It
+would be impossible for her to stand Verinder to-day without screaming.
+A sheer physical lassitude weighted her limbs. In the end she went back
+to bed and sent for India.
+
+"I'm not feeling fit, dear. Would you mind if I beg off?" she asked with
+a wan smile.
+
+Her friend took in keenly the big deep-pupiled eyes ringed with
+weariness. "I don't believe you've slept a wink, Moya. Of course you
+needn't go. Shall I stay with you? I don't really care about going. I'm
+about fed up with Dobyans Verinder."
+
+But Moya would not hear of this. She protested so much that India saw it
+would be a greater kindness to leave her alone.
+
+"You must try to sleep again, dear." India moved about, darkening the
+windows and shaking up the pillows.
+
+"Yes, I will. I'm all right, you know."
+
+Left to herself, Moya tried to sleep. It was no use. She was wide awake,
+beyond hope of another nap. No sooner had the voices of the riders died
+in the distance than she was dressing feverishly. She told herself that
+she would go outdoors somewhere with a book and rest. Otherwise Lady
+Farquhar would be asking questions.
+
+Fisher brought her some fruit, a cup of coffee, and a roll. Moya drank
+the coffee and ate the fruit, after which she went out into the crisp
+Colorado sunlight. By her watch it was now 9:50.
+
+She made an elaborate pretense with herself of hesitating which way to
+go. Her thoughts, her eyes, and at last her footsteps turned toward the
+grove where yesterday Jack Kilmeny had surprised her. But she was too
+used to being honest with herself to keep up the farce. Stopping on the
+trail, she brought herself to time.
+
+"You're going to meet that outlaw, Moya Dwight. You said you wouldn't,
+but you are going. That's why you got out of that ride. No use fibbing
+to yourself. You've no more will power than a moth buzzing around a
+candle flame."
+
+So she put it to herself, frankly and contemptuously. But no matter how
+she scorned herself for it there was not in her the strength to turn her
+back on her temptation. She had always prided herself on knowing her own
+mind and following it, but the longing in her to hear this man's
+justification was more potent than pride. Slowly her reluctant steps
+moved toward the grove.
+
+Long slants of morning sunlight filtered through the leaves of the
+cottonwoods so that her figure was flaked with a shifting checkerboard
+of shadow and shine. She sauntered forward, looking neither to the right
+nor the left, expecting every instant to hear his cheery impudent
+greeting.
+
+It did not come. She stole sidelong looks here and there through the
+dappled woods. They were empty of life save for the chipmunk sitting on
+its hind legs and watching her light approach. A breeze swept across
+the river, caught her filmy skirts, and blew them about her ankles. She
+frowned, brushing down the wind-swept draperies with that instinct for
+modesty all women share. Shy and supple, elastic-heeled, in that
+diaphanous half light her slim long body might have been taken for that
+of a wood nymph had there been eyes to follow her through the umbrageous
+glade.
+
+Of human eyes there were none. She reached her flat rock and sank upon
+its moss ungreeted. Her disappointment was keen, even though reason had
+told her he dared not show himself here after adding a second crime to
+the first, and this time against her friend, the man who had offered to
+stand by him in his trouble. An instinct deeper than logic--some sure
+understanding of the man's reckless courage--had made her feel certain
+that he would be on the spot.
+
+Mingled with her disappointment was a sharp sense of shame. He had told
+her to come here and wait for him, as if she had been a country
+milk-maid--and here she was meekly waiting. Could degradation take her
+lower than this, that she should slip out alone to keep an assignation
+with a thief and a liar who had not taken the trouble to come? At any
+rate, she was spared one humiliation. He would never know she had gone
+to meet him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OLD FRIENDS
+
+
+Into the depths of her scorching self-contempt came his blithe
+"Good-morning, neighbor."
+
+Her heart leaped, but before she looked around Moya made sure no tales
+could be read in her face. Her eyes met his with quiet scorn.
+
+"I was wondering if you would dare come." The young woman's voice came
+cool and aloof as the splash of a mountain rivulet.
+
+"Why shouldn't I come, since I wanted to?"
+
+"You can ask me that--now."
+
+Her manner told him that judgment had been passed, but it did not shake
+the cheerful good humor of the man.
+
+"I reckon I can."
+
+"Of course you can. I might have known you could. You will probably have
+the effrontery to deny that you are the man who robbed Captain Kilmeny."
+
+"Did he say I was the man?" There was amusement and a touch of interest
+in his voice.
+
+"He didn't deny it. I knew it must be you. I told him everything--how
+you found out from me that he was going to Gunnison with the money and
+hurried away to rob him of it. Because you are his cousin he wouldn't
+accuse you. But I did. I do now. You stole the money a second time." Her
+words were low, but in them was an extraordinary vehemence, the
+tenseness of repressed feeling.
+
+"So he wouldn't accuse me, nor yet wouldn't deny that I was the man.
+Well, I'll not deny it either, since you're so sure."
+
+"You are wise, sir. You can't delude me a second time. Your denial would
+count for nothing. And now I think there is nothing more to be said."
+
+She had risen and was about to turn away. A gesture of his hand stopped
+her.
+
+"If you were so sure about me why didn't you have the officers here to
+arrest me?"
+
+"Because--because you are a relative of my friends."
+
+"That was the only reason, was it?"
+
+"What other reason could there be?" she asked, a flash of warning in her
+eyes.
+
+"There might be this reason--that at the bottom of your heart you know I
+didn't do it."
+
+"Can you tell me you didn't hold up Captain Kilmeny? Dare you tell me
+that?"
+
+He shrugged his broad shoulders. "No, I held him up."
+
+"And robbed him."
+
+"If you like to put it that way. I had to do it."
+
+"Had to rob your friend, the man who had offered to stand by you. Oh, I
+don't want to hear any of your excuses."
+
+"Yes, you do," he told her quietly. "What's more, you are going to hear
+them--and right now. You're entitled to an explanation, and it's my
+right to make you listen."
+
+"Can you talk away facts? You robbed your cousin when he was trying to
+be your friend. That may mean nothing to you. It means a great deal to
+me," she cried passionately.
+
+"Sho! An opera bouffe hold-up. I'll make it right with him when I see
+Captain Kilmeny."
+
+"You admit you took the money?"
+
+"Sure I took it. Had to have it in my business. If you'll sit down again
+and listen, neighbor, I'll tell you the whole story."
+
+The amused assurance in his manner stirred resentment.
+
+"No."
+
+"Yes."
+
+The clash of battle was in the meeting of their eyes. She had courage,
+just as he had, but she was fighting against her own desire.
+
+"I have listened too often already," she protested.
+
+"It hasn't hurt you any, has it?"
+
+"Lady Farquhar thinks it has." The words slipped out before she could
+stop them, but as their import came home to her the girl's face flamed.
+"I mean that--that----"
+
+"I know what you mean," he told her easily, a smile in his shrewd eyes.
+"You're a young woman--and I'm an ineligible man. So Lady Farquhar
+thinks we oughtn't to meet. That's all bosh. I'm not intending to make
+love to you, even though I think you're a mighty nice girl. But say I
+was. What then? Your friends can't shut you up in a glass cage if you're
+going to keep on growing. Life was made to be lived."
+
+"Yes.... Yes.... That's what I think," she cried eagerly. "But it isn't
+arranged for girls that way--not if they belong to the class I do. We're
+shut in--chaperoned from everything that's natural. You don't know how I
+hate it."
+
+"Of course you do. You're a live wire. That's why you're going to sit
+down and listen to me."
+
+She looked him straight between the eyes. "But I don't think morality is
+only a convention, Mr. Kilmeny. 'Thou shalt not steal,' for instance."
+
+"Depends what you steal. If you take from a man what doesn't belong to
+him you're doing the community a service. But we won't go into that now,
+though I'll just say this. What is right for me wouldn't be for Captain
+Kilmeny. As I told you before, our standards are different."
+
+"Yes, you explained that to me just after you--while you were hiding
+from the officers after the first robbery," she assented dryly.
+
+He looked at her and laughed. "You're prosecuting attorney and judge and
+jury all in one, aren't you?"
+
+She held her little head uncompromisingly erect. Not again was she going
+to let her sympathy for him warp her judgment.
+
+"I'm ready to hear what you have to say, Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+"Not guilty, ma'am."
+
+His jaunty insouciance struck a spark from her. "That is what you told
+us before, and within half an hour we found out that you knew where the
+booty was hidden. Before that discrepancy was cleared up you convinced
+us of your innocence by stealing the money a second time."
+
+"What did I do with it?" he asked.
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+From his pocket he drew a note book. Between two of its leaves was a
+slip of paper which he handed to Moya. It was a receipt in full from the
+treasurer of the Gunnison County Fair association to John Kilmeny for
+the sum previously taken from him by parties unknown.
+
+The girl looked at him with shining eyes. "You repented and took the
+money back?"
+
+"No. I didn't repent, but I took it back."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's a long tale. It's tied up with the story of my life--goes back
+thirty-one years, before I was born, in fact. Want to hear it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My father was a young man when he came to this country. The West wasn't
+very civilized then. My father was fearless and outspoken. This made him
+enemies among the gang of cattle thieves operating in the country where
+his ranch lay. He lost calves. One day he caught a brand blotter at
+work. The fellow refused to surrender. There was a fight, and my father
+killed him."
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl softly in fascinated horror.
+
+"Such things had to be in those days. Any man that was a man had
+sometimes to fight or else go to the wall."
+
+"I can see that. I wasn't blaming your father. Only ... it must have
+been horrible to have to do."
+
+"The fellow thieves of the man swore vengeance. One night they caught
+the chief--that's what I used to call my father--caught him alone in a
+gambling hell in the cow town where the stockmen came to buy provisions.
+My father had gone there by appointment to meet a man--lured to his
+death by a forged note. He knew he had probably come to the end of the
+passage as soon as he had stepped into the place. His one chance was to
+turn and run. He wouldn't do that."
+
+"I love him for it," the girl cried impetuously.
+
+"The story goes that he looked them over contemptuously, the whole half
+dozen of them, and laughed in a slow irritating way that must have got
+under their hides."
+
+Moya, looking at the son, could believe easily this story of the father.
+"Go on," she nodded tensely.
+
+"The quarrel came, as of course it would. Just before the guns flashed a
+stranger rose from a corner and told the rustlers they would have to
+count him in the scrap, that he wouldn't stand for a six to one row."
+
+"Wasn't that fine? I suppose he was a friend of your father he had
+helped some time."
+
+"No. He had never seen him before. But he happened to be a man."
+
+The eyes of the girl were shining. For the moment she was almost
+beautiful. A flame seemed to run over her dusky face, the glow of her
+generous heart finding expression externally. It was a part of her charm
+that her delight in life bubbled out in little spasms of laughter, in
+impetuous movements wholly unpremeditated.
+
+"I'm glad there are such men," she cried softly.
+
+"The story of that fight is a classic to-day in the hills. When it ended
+two of the rustlers were dead, two badly wounded, and the others
+galloping away for their lives. The chief and his unknown friend were
+lying on the floor shot to pieces."
+
+"But they lived--surely they didn't die?"
+
+"Yes, they lived and became close friends. A few years later they were
+partners. Both of them are dead now. Sam Lundy--that was the name of my
+father's rescuer--left two children, a boy and a girl. We call the boy
+Curly. He was down at the camp fishing with me."
+
+She saw the truth then--knew in a flash that the man beside her had run
+the risk of prison to save his friend. And her heart went out to him in
+such a rush of feeling that she had to turn her face away.
+
+"You paid back the debt to the son that your father owed his. Oh, I'm
+glad--so glad."
+
+"Guessed it, have you?"
+
+"Your friend was the thief."
+
+"He took the money, but he's no thief--not in his heart. In England only
+a criminal would do such a thing, but it's different here. A hold-up may
+be a decent fellow gone wrong through drink and bad company. That's how
+it was this time. My friend is a range rider. His heart is as open and
+clean as the plains. But he's young yet--just turned twenty--and he's
+easily led. This thing was sprung on him by an older man with whom he
+had been drinking. Before they were sober he and Mosby had taken the
+money."
+
+"I am sorry," the girl said, almost under her breath.
+
+There was still some hint of the child in the naive nobility of her
+youth. Joyce Seldon would have had no doubts about what to think of this
+alien society where an honest man could be a thief and his friend stand
+ready to excuse him. Moya found it fresh and stimulating.
+
+He explained more fully. "Colter by chance got a line on what the kid
+and Mosby were planning to pull off. Knowing I had some influence with
+Curly, he came straight to me. That was just after the finals in the
+riding."
+
+"I remember seeing him with you. We all thought you should have come up
+for a few words with us."
+
+"I intended to, but there wasn't any time. We hurried out to find Curly.
+Well, we were too late. Our horses were gone by the time we had reached
+the corral where we were stabling, but those of the other boys were
+waiting in the stalls already saddled. We guessed the hold-up would be
+close to the bank, because the treasurer of the association might take
+any one of three streets to drive in from the fair grounds. That's where
+we went wrong. The boys were just drunk enough not to remember this.
+Well, while we were looking for our friends so as to stop this crazy
+play they were going to pull off, Colter and I met the president of the
+bank. We had known him in the mining country and he held us there
+talking. While we were still there news comes of the robbery."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"We struck straight back to the corral. Our horses were there. The boys
+had ridden back, swapped them for their own, and hit the trail. Mosby's
+idea had been to throw suspicion on us for an hour or two until they
+could make their getaway. We rode back to the crowd, learned the
+particulars, and followed the boys. My thought was that if we could get
+the money from them we might make terms with the association."
+
+"That's why you were in a hurry when you passed us."
+
+"That's why."
+
+"And of course the sheriff thought you were running away from him."
+
+"He couldn't think anything else, could he?"
+
+"How blind I was--how lacking in faith! And all the time I knew in my
+heart you couldn't have done it," she reproached herself.
+
+His masterful eyes fastened on her. "Did your friends know it? Did Miss
+Joyce think I couldn't have done it?"
+
+"You'll have to ask her what she thought. I didn't hear Joyce give an
+opinion."
+
+"Is she going to marry that fellow Verinder?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"He'll ask her, won't he?"
+
+She smiled at his blunt question a little wanly. "You'll have to ask
+Mr. Verinder that. I'm not in his confidence."
+
+"You're quibbling. You know well enough."
+
+"I think he will."
+
+"Will she take him?"
+
+"It's hard to tell what Joyce will do. I'd rather not discuss the
+subject, please. Tell me, did you find your friends?"
+
+"We ran them down in the hills at last. I knew pretty well about where
+they would be and one morning I dropped in on them. We talked it all
+over and I put it up to them that if they would turn the loot over to me
+I'd try to call off the officers. Curly was sick and ashamed of the
+whole business and was willing to do whatever I thought best. Mosby had
+different notions, but I persuaded him to see the light. They told me
+where they had hidden the money in the river. I was on my way back to
+get it when I found little Bess Landor lost in the hills. Gill nabbed me
+as I took her to the ranch."
+
+"And after you were taken back to Gunnison--Did you break prison?"
+
+"I proved an alibi--one the sheriff couldn't get away from. We had
+gilt-edged proof we weren't near the scene of the robbery. The president
+of the bank had been talking to us about ten minutes when the treasurer
+of the association drove up at a gallop to say he had just been
+robbed."
+
+"So they freed you."
+
+"I made a proposition to the district attorney and the directors of the
+association--that if I got the money back all prosecutions would be
+dropped. They agreed. I came back for the money and found it gone."
+
+"If you had only told me that then."
+
+"I had no time. My first thought was to tell my cousin the truth, but I
+was afraid to take a chance on him. The only way to save Curly was to
+take back the money myself. I couldn't be sure that Captain Kilmeny
+would believe my story. So I played it safe and helped myself."
+
+"You must think a lot of your friend to go so far for him."
+
+"His mother turned him over to me to make a man of him, and if she
+hadn't I owed it to his father's son."
+
+Her eyes poured upon him their warm approving light. "Yes, you would
+have to help him, no matter what it cost."
+
+He protested against heroics with a face crinkled to humor. "It wasn't
+costing me a cent."
+
+"It might have cost you a great deal. Suppose that Captain Kilmeny had
+picked up his gun. You couldn't have shot him."
+
+"I'd have told him who I was and why I must have the money. No, Miss
+Dwight, I don't fit the specifications of a hero."
+
+Moya's lips curved to the sweet little derisive twist that was a smile
+in embryo. "I know about you, sir."
+
+Kilmeny took his eyes from her to let them rest upon a man and a woman
+walking the river trail below. The man bowed and the Westerner answered
+the greeting by lifting his hat. When he looked back at his companion he
+was smiling impishly. For the two by the river bank were Lord and Lady
+Farquhar.
+
+"Caught! You naughty little baggage! I wonder whether you'll be smacked
+this time."
+
+Her eyes met his in a quick surprise that was on the verge of hauteur.
+
+"Sir."
+
+"Yes, I think you'll be smacked. You know you've been told time and
+again not to take up with strange boys--and Americans, at that. Mith
+Lupton warned you on the _Victorian_--and Lady Farquhar has warned you
+aplenty."
+
+Her lips parted to speak, but no sound came from them. She was on the
+verge of a discovery, and he knew it.
+
+"Hope you won't mind the smacking much. Besides, it would be somefing
+else if it wasn't this," he continued, mimicking a childish lisp he had
+never forgotten.
+
+"Miss Lupton!"
+
+A fugitive memory flashed across her mind. What she saw was this: a
+glassy sea after sunset, the cheerful life on the deck of an ocean
+liner, a little girl playing at--at--why, at selling stars of her own
+manufacture. The picture began to take form. A boy came into it, and
+vaguely other figures. She recalled impending punishment, intervention,
+two children snuggled beneath a steamer rug, and last the impulsive kiss
+of a little girl determined to exact the last morsel of joy before
+retribution fell.
+
+"Are you that boy?" she asked, eyes wide open and burning.
+
+"It's harder to believe you're that long-legged little fairy in white
+socks."
+
+"So you knew me ... all the time ... and I didn't know you at all."
+
+Her voice trembled. The look she flung toward him was shy and diffident.
+She had loved him then. She loved him now. Somehow he was infinitely
+nearer to her than he had been.
+
+"Yes, I knew you. I've always known you. That's because you're a dream
+friend of mine. In the daytime I've had other things to think about, but
+at night you're a great pal of mine."
+
+"You mean ... before ... we met again?"
+
+"That's what I mean."
+
+The pink surged into her cheeks. "I've dreamed about you too," she
+confessed with an adorable shyness. "How strange it is--to meet again
+after all these years."
+
+"Not strange to me. Somehow I expected to meet you. Wasn't that in your
+dreams too--that some day we should meet again?"
+
+"I was always meeting you. But--why didn't I know you?"
+
+"I'll confess that I wouldn't have known you if it hadn't been for your
+name."
+
+"You think I've changed, then?"
+
+"No, you haven't changed. You've only grown up. You're still a little
+rebel. Sometimes you still think it's howwid to be a dirl."
+
+"Only when they won't let me do things," she smiled. "And you really
+remember even my lisp."
+
+"You have a faint hint of it yet sometimes when you are excited."
+
+"I'm excited now--tremendously." She laughed to belie her words, but the
+note of agitation was not to be concealed. Her mouth was strangely dry
+and her heart had a queer uncertain beat. "Why shouldn't I be--with my
+baby days popping out at me like this when I thought they were dead and
+buried? It's ... it's the strangest thing...."
+
+His blood too responded to a quickened beat. He could not understand the
+reason for it. Since he had no intention of being sentimental he was
+distinctly annoyed at himself. If it had been Joyce Seldon now--well,
+that would have been another tale.
+
+Over the brow of a hillock appeared Lord and Lady Farquhar walking
+toward them. One glance told Moya that her chaperone had made up her
+mind to drive Jack Kilmeny from the field. The girl ran forward quickly.
+
+"We've just found out the oddest thing, Lady Farquhar. Mr. Kilmeny and I
+are old friends. We met when we were children," she cried quickly.
+
+Lady Jim looked at her husband. He cleared his throat in some
+embarrassment.
+
+"Mornin', Mr. Kilmeny. If you have time I'd like to have you look over
+some ore samples sent from our mine."
+
+The American smiled. He understood perfectly. "I've got all the time
+there is."
+
+Moya intervened again. "First let me tell you the news. Mr. Kilmeny has
+been freed of all suspicion in connection with the robbery. The money
+has been returned and the whole thing dropped."
+
+Farquhar's face cleared. "Glad to hear it." He emphasized his words, by
+adding a moment later: "By Jove, I _am_ glad. Congratulations, Mr.
+Kilmeny."
+
+His wife added hers, but there was a note of reserve in her manner.
+Plainly she was not fully satisfied.
+
+Eagerly Moya turned to the young man. "May I tell all about it?"
+
+He hesitated, then nodded shortly. "If you like."
+
+Her voice vibrant with sympathy, Moya told the story in her ardent way.
+Kilmeny said nothing, but the corners of his mouth suggested amusement.
+Something of humorous derision in his blue eyes told Farquhar that the
+Coloradoan did not take the girl's admiration as his due. Rather, he
+seemed to regard it merely as an evidence of her young enthusiasm.
+
+Lord Farquhar shook hands frankly with Kilmeny. "We've done you an
+injustice. If I had a son I would want him to have played the part you
+did under the same circumstances."
+
+His wife backed him up loyally but with misgivings. The character of
+this young man might be cleared but that did not make him any more
+eligible. Her smile had in it some suggestion of the reserve of the
+chaperone.
+
+"I'm glad to know the truth, Mr. Kilmeny. It does you credit. Your
+cousins won't be back to lunch but if you can stay----"
+
+"I can't, Lady Farquhar. Thanks just the same. I've got to ride up into
+the hills to let the boys know it's all right. We'll be leaving
+to-morrow to go back to work."
+
+"We go to-morrow too. I suppose this will be good-by, then." Lady
+Farquhar offered her hand.
+
+Kilmeny turned last to Moya. "Good-by, neighbor."
+
+Her eyes did not shrink as the small hand was buried for an instant in
+his brown palm, but the youth in her face was quenched.
+
+"Good-by," she repeated in a colorless voice.
+
+"Sorry I wasn't able to say good-by to my cousins and Miss Seldon. I
+understand you're all going up to the mines. Tell Captain Kilmeny I'll
+try to see him at Goldbanks and make all proper apologies for my bad
+manners yesterday."
+
+Moya's face lit up. "Do you live at Goldbanks?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+He bowed and turned away.
+
+The girl was left wondering. There had been a note of reservation in his
+manner when she had spoken of Goldbanks. Was there after all some
+mystery about him or his occupation, something he did not want them to
+know? Her interest was incredibly aroused.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A BLIZZARD
+
+
+Moya found in Goldbanks much to interest her. Its helter-skelter streets
+following the line of least resistance, its slapdash buildings, the
+scarred hillsides dotted with red shaft-houses beneath which straggled
+slate-colored dumps like long beards, were all indigenous to a life the
+manner of which she could only guess. Judged by her Bret Harte, the
+place ought to be picturesque. Perhaps it was, but Moya was given little
+chance to find out. At least it was interesting. Even from an outside
+point of view she could see that existence was reduced to the elemental.
+Men fought for gold against danger and privation and toil. No doubt if
+she could have seen their hearts they fought too for love.
+
+Miss Seldon was frankly bored by the crude rawness of the place. One
+phase of it alone interested her. Of all this turbid activity Dobyans
+Verinder was the chief profiter. Other capitalists had an interest in
+the camp. Lord Farquhar held stock in the Mollie Gibson and Moya's small
+inheritance was invested mostly in the mine. The Kilmenys owned shares
+in two or three paying companies. But Verinder was far and away the
+largest single owner. His holdings were scattered all over the camp. In
+the Mollie Gibson and the Never Quit, the two biggest properties at
+Goldbanks, he held a controlling vote.
+
+It was impossible for Joyce to put her nose out of the hotel without
+being confronted with the wealth of her suitor. This made a tremendous
+appeal to the imagination of the young woman. All these thousands of men
+were toiling to make him richer. If Verinder could have known it, the
+environment was a potent ally for him. In London he was a social
+climber, in spite of his gold; here he was a sole autocrat of the camp.
+As the weeks passed he began to look more possible. His wealth would
+give an amplitude, a spaciousness that would make the relationship
+tolerable. As a man of moderate means he would not have done at all, but
+every added million would help to reduce the intimacy of the marital
+tie. To a certain extent she would go her way and he his. Meanwhile, she
+kept him guessing. Sometimes her smiles brought him on the run. Again he
+was made to understand that it would be better to keep his distance.
+
+The days grew shorter and the mornings colder. As the weeks passed the
+approach of winter began to push autumn back. Once or twice there was an
+inch of snow in the night that melted within a few hours. The Farquhar
+party began to talk of getting back to London, but there was an
+impending consolidation of properties that held the men at Goldbanks.
+For a month it had been understood that they would be leaving in a few
+days now, but the deal on hand was of such importance that it was felt
+best to stay until it was effected.
+
+One afternoon Moya and Joyce rode out from the canon where the ugly
+little town lay huddled and followed the road down into the foothills.
+It was a day of sunshine, but back of the mountains hung a cloud that
+had been pushing slowly forward. In it the peaks were already lost. The
+great hills looked as if the knife of a Titan had sheered off their
+summits.
+
+The young women came to a bit of level and cantered across the mesa in a
+race. They had left the road to find wild flowers for Lady Jim.
+
+Joyce, in a flush of physical well-being, drew up from the gallop and
+called back in gay derision to her friend.
+
+"Oh, you slow-pokes! We win. Don't we, Two Step?" And she patted the
+neck of her pony with a little gloved hand.
+
+Moya halted beside the dainty beauty and laughed slowly, showing in two
+even rows the tips of small strong teeth.
+
+"Of course you win. You're always off with a hurrah before one knows
+what's on. Nobody else has a chance."
+
+The victor flashed a saucy glance at her. "I like to win. It's more
+fun."
+
+"Yes, it's more fun, but----"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I was thinking that it's no fun for the loser."
+
+"That's his lookout," came the swift retort. "Nobody makes him play."
+
+Moya did not answer. She was thinking how Joyce charged the batteries of
+men's emotions by the slow look of her deep eyes, by the languorous turn
+of her head, by the enthralment of her grace.
+
+"I wouldn't have your conscience for worlds, Moya. I don't want to be so
+dreadfully proper until I'm old and ugly," Joyce continued, pouting.
+
+"Lady Jim is always complaining because I'm not proper enough," laughed
+Moya. "She's forever holding you up to me as an example."
+
+"So I am. Of course I flirt. I always shall. But I'll not come a
+cropper. I'll never let my flirtations interfere with business. Lady Jim
+knows that."
+
+Moya looked straight at her. "Were you ever in love in your life?"
+
+Her friend laughed to cover a faint blush. "What an _enfant terrible_
+you are, my dear! Of course I've been--hundreds of times."
+
+"No, but--really?"
+
+"If you mean the way they are in novels, a desperate
+follow-to-the-end-of-the-world, love-in-a-cottage kind--no. My emotions
+are quite under control, thank you. What is it you're driving at?"
+
+"I just wondered. Look how cloudy the sky is getting. It's going to
+storm. We'd better be going home."
+
+"Let's get our flowers first."
+
+They wandered among the hills, searching for the gorgeous blossoms of
+fall. Not for half an hour did they remount.
+
+"Which way for home?" Joyce asked briskly, smoothing her skirt.
+
+Moya looked around before she answered. "I don't know. Must be over that
+way, don't you think?"
+
+Joyce answered with a laugh, using a bit of American slang she had heard
+the day before. "Search me! Wouldn't it be jolly if we were lost?"
+
+"How dark the sky is getting. I believe a flake of snow fell on my
+hand."
+
+"Yes. There's one on my face. The road must be just around this hill."
+
+"I daresay you're right. These hills are like peas in a pod. I can't
+tell one from another."
+
+They rode around the base of the hill into a little valley formed by
+other hills. No sign of the road appeared.
+
+"We're lost, Moya, They'll have to send out search parties for us.
+We'll get in the dreadful Sunday papers again," Joyce laughed.
+
+An anxious little frown showed on Moya's forehead. She was not
+frightened, but she was beginning to get worried. A rising wind and a
+falling temperature were not good omens. Moreover, one of those swift
+changes common to the Rockies had come over the country. Out of a leaden
+sky snow was falling fast. Banked clouds were driving the wintry
+sunshine toward the horizon. It would soon be night, and if the signs
+were true a bitter one of storm.
+
+"It's getting cold. We must find the road and hurry home," Joyce said.
+
+"Yes." Moya's voice was cheerful, but her heart had sunk. An icy hand
+seemed to have clutched it and tightened. She had heard the dreadful
+things that happened during Rocky Mountain blizzards. They must find the
+road. They _must_ find it.
+
+She set herself searching for it, conscious all the time that they might
+be going in the wrong direction. For this unfeatured roll of hills
+offered no guide, no landmark that stood out from the surrounding
+country.
+
+Moya covered her anxiety with laughter and small jokes, but there came a
+time when these did not avail, when Joyce faced the truth too--that they
+were lost in the desert, two helpless girls, with night upon them and a
+storm driving up. Somewhere, not many miles from them, lay Goldbanks.
+There were safety, snug electric-lighted rooms with great fires blazing
+from open chimneys, a thousand men who would gladly have gone into the
+night to look for them. But all of these might as well be a hundred
+leagues away, since they did not know the way home.
+
+The big deep eyes of Joyce shone with fear. Never before in her
+sheltered life had she been brought close to Nature in one of her
+terrible moods.
+
+From her soft round throat sobbing words leaped. "We're lost, Moya.
+We're going to die."
+
+"Nonsense. Don't be a goosie," her downright friend answered sharply.
+
+"But--what shall we do?"
+
+Scudding clouds had leaped across the sky and wiped out the last narrow
+line of sunlight along the eastern horizon. Every minute it was getting
+colder. The wind had a bitter sting to it.
+
+"We must find the trail," Moya replied.
+
+"And if we don't?"
+
+"But we shall," the Irish girl assured with a finality that lacked
+conviction. "You wait here. Don't move from the spot. I'm going to ride
+round you at a little distance. There must be a trail here somewhere."
+
+Moya gave her pony the quirt and cantered off. Swiftly she circled, but
+before she had completed the circumference the snow, now falling
+heavily, had covered the ground and obliterated any path there might be.
+With a heavy heart she started to return to her friend.
+
+Owing both to the lie of the ground and the increasing density she could
+not see Joyce. Thrice she called before a faint answer reached her ears.
+Moya rode toward the voice, stopping now and again to call and wait for
+a reply. Her horizon was now just beyond the nose of her pony, so that
+it was not until they were only a few yards apart that she saw Two Step
+and its rider. Both broncho and girl were sheeted with snow.
+
+"Oh, I thought you were gone. I thought you were never coming," Joyce
+reproached in a wail of despair. "Did you find the road?"
+
+"No, but I've thought of something. They say horses will find their own
+way home if you let them. Loosen the reins, dear."
+
+Moya spoke with a business-like cheerfulness meant to deceive her
+friend. She knew it must be her part to lead. Joyce was as soft and
+about as competent as a kitten to face a crisis like this. She was a
+creature all curves and dimples, sparkling with the sunshine of life
+like the wavelets of a glassy sea. But there was in her an instinctive
+shrinking from all pain and harshness. When her little world refused to
+smile, as very rarely it did for her, she shut her eyes, stopped her
+ears, and pouted. Against the implacable condition that confronted them
+now she could only whimper her despair.
+
+They waited with loose reins for the ponies to move. The storm beat upon
+them, confining their vision to a space within reach of their
+outstretched arms. Only the frightened wails of Joyce and the comforting
+words of her friend could be heard in the shriek of the wind. The
+ponies, feeling themselves free, stirred restlessly. Moya clucked to her
+roan and patted his neck encouragingly.
+
+"Good old Billy. Take us home, old fellow," she urged.
+
+Presently the horse began to move, aimlessly at first, but soon with a
+steadiness that suggested purpose. Moya unloosed with her chill fingers
+the rope coiled to her saddle, and threw one end to her friend.
+
+"Tie it tight to the saddle horn, Joyce--with a double knot," she
+ordered. "And keep your hand on it to see that it doesn't come undone."
+
+"I can't tie it. My hands are frozen ... I'm freezing to death."
+
+Moya made fast one end of the rope and then slipped from the saddle. The
+other end she tied securely to the saddle horn of her friend. She
+stripped from her hands the heavy riding gauntlets she wore and gave
+them to Joyce.
+
+"Pull these on and your hands will be warmer. Don't give up. Sit tight
+and buck up. If you do we'll be all right."
+
+"But I can't.... It's awful.... How far do we have to go?"
+
+"We'll soon hit the road. Then we can go faster."
+
+Moya swung to her saddle again stiffly, and Billy took up the march in
+the driving storm, which was growing every minute more fierce and
+bitter. The girl did not dare give way to her own terror, for she felt
+if she should become panic-stricken all would be lost. She tried to
+remember how long people could live in a blizzard. Had she not read of
+some men who had been out two days in one and yet reached safety?
+
+The icy blast bit into her, searched through to her bones and sapped her
+strength. More than once she drew up the rope with her icy hands to make
+sure that Joyce was still in the saddle. She found her there blue from
+exposure, almost helpless, but still faintly responsive to the call of
+life.
+
+The horses moved faster, with more certainty, so that Moya felt they had
+struck a familiar trail. But in her heart she doubted whether either of
+the riders would come to shelter alive. The ponies traveled upward into
+the hills.
+
+Joyce, lying forward helpless across the saddle horn, slid gently to the
+ground. Her friend stopped. What could she do? Once she had descended,
+it would be impossible to get back into the saddle.
+
+Searching the hillside, the girl's glance was arrested by a light. She
+could not at first believe her good fortune. From the saddle she slipped
+to the ground in a huddle, stiffly found her feet again, and began to
+clamber up the stiff incline. Presently she made out a hut. Stumblingly,
+she staggered up till she reached the door and fell heavily against it,
+clutching at the latch so that it gave to her hand and sent her lurching
+into the room. Her knees doubled under her and she sank at the feet of
+one of two men who sat beside a table playing cards.
+
+The man leaped up as if he had seen a ghost. "Goddlemighty, it's a
+woman!"
+
+"My friend ... she's outside ... at the foot of the hill ... save her,"
+the girl's white lips framed.
+
+They slipped on mackinaw coats and disappeared into the white swirling
+night. Moya crouched beside the red-hot stove, and life slowly tingled
+through her frozen veins, filling her with sharp pain. To keep back the
+groans she had to set her teeth. It seemed to her that she had never
+endured such agony.
+
+After a time the men returned, carrying Joyce between them. They put her
+on the bed at the far corner of the room, and one of the men poured from
+a bottle on the table some whisky. This they forced between her
+unconscious lips. With a shivering sigh she came back to her
+surroundings.
+
+Moya moved across to the group by the bed.
+
+"I'll take care of her if you'll look after the horses," she told the
+men.
+
+One of them answered roughly. "The horses will have to rough it. This
+ain't any night for humans to be hunting horses."
+
+"They can't be far," Moya pleaded.
+
+Grudgingly the second man spoke. "Guess we better get them, Dave. They
+were down where we found the girl. We can stable them in the tunnel."
+
+Left to herself, Moya unlaced the shoes of Miss Seldon. Vigorously she
+rubbed the feet and limbs till the circulation began to be restored.
+Joyce cried and writhed with the pain, while the other young woman
+massaged and cuddled her in turn. The worst of the suffering was past
+before the men returned, stamping snow from their feet and shaking it
+from their garments over the floor.
+
+"A hell of a night to be out in," the one called Dave growled to his
+fellow.
+
+"Did you get the horses?" Moya asked timidly.
+
+"They're in the tunnel." The ungracious answer was given without a
+glance in her direction.
+
+They were a black-a-vised, ill-favored pair, these miners upon whose
+hospitality fate had thrown them. Foreigners of some sort they were,
+Cornishmen, Moya guessed. But whatever their nationality they were
+primeval savages untouched by the fourteen centuries of civilizing
+influences since their forbears ravaged England. To the super-nervous
+minds of these exhausted young women there was a suggestion of apes in
+the huge musclebound shoulders and the great rough hands at the ends of
+long gnarled arms. Small shifty black eyes, rimmed with red from drink,
+suggested cunning, while the loose-lipped heavy mouths added more than a
+hint of bestiality. It lent no comfort to the study of them that the
+large whisky bottle was two-thirds empty.
+
+They slouched back to their cards and their bottle. It had been bad
+enough to find them sullen and inhospitable, but as the liquor
+stimulated their unhealthy imaginations it was worse to feel the covert
+looks stealing now and again toward them. Joyce, sleeping fitfully in
+the arms of Moya, woke with a start to see them drinking together at the
+table.
+
+"I don't like them. I'm afraid of them," she whispered.
+
+"We mustn't let them know it," Moya whispered in her ear.
+
+For an hour she had been racked by fears, had faced unflinchingly their
+low laughs and furtive glances.
+
+Now one of the men spoke. "From Goldbanks?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't live there."
+
+"No. We belong to the English party--Mr. Verinder's friends."
+
+"Oh, Verinder's friends. And which of you is his particular friend?" The
+sneer was unmistakable.
+
+"We started out this afternoon for wild flowers and the storm caught
+us," Moya hurried on.
+
+"So you're Verinder's friends, are you? Well, we don't think a whole lot
+of Mr. Verinder out here."
+
+Moya knew now that the mention of Verinder's name had been a mistake.
+The relations between the mine owners and the workmen in the camp were
+strained, and as a foreign non-resident capitalist the English
+millionaire was especially obnoxious. Moreover, his supercilious manners
+had not helped to endear him since his arrival.
+
+The man called Dave got to his feet with a reckless laugh. "No free
+lodgings here for Mr. Verinder's friends. You'n got to pay for your
+keep, my dears."
+
+Miss Dwight looked at him with unflinching eyes which refused to
+understand his meaning. "We'll pay whatever you ask and double the
+amount after we reach camp."
+
+"Don't want your dirty money. Gi' us a kiss, lass. That's fair pay. We
+ain't above kissing Verinder's friends if he is a rotten slave driver."
+
+Moya rose to her slender height, and the flash of courage blazed in her
+eyes.
+
+"Sit down," she ordered.
+
+The man stopped in his tracks, amazed at the resolution of the slim tall
+girl.
+
+"Go on, Dave. Don't let her bluff you," his companion urged.
+
+The miner laughed and moved forward.
+
+"You coward, to take advantage of two girls driven to you by the storm.
+I didn't think the man lived that would do it," panted Moya.
+
+"You'n got a bit to learn, miss. Whad's the use of gettin' your Dutch
+up. I ain't good enough for 'ee, like enough."
+
+The girl held up a hand. "Listen!"
+
+They could hear only the wild roar of the storm outside and the low sobs
+of Joyce as she lay crouched on the bed.
+
+"Well?" he growled. "I'm listenin'. What, then?"
+
+"I'd rather go out into that white death than stay here with such
+creatures as you are."
+
+"Doan't be a fool, lass. Us'n won't hurt 'ee any," the second man
+reassured roughly.
+
+"You'll stay here where it's warm. But you'll remember that we're boss
+in this shack. You'n came without being asked. I'm domned if you'll
+ride your high horse over me."
+
+"Go on, Dave. Tak' your kiss, man."
+
+Then the miracle happened. The door opened, and out of the swirling
+wind-tossed snow came a Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OUT OF THE STORM A MAN
+
+
+He stood blinking in the doorway, white-sheeted with snow from head to
+heel. As his eyes became accustomed to the light they passed with
+surprise from the men to the young women. A flash of recognition lit in
+them, but he offered no word of greeting.
+
+Plainly he had interrupted a scene of some sort. The leer on the flushed
+face of Dave, the look of undaunted spirit in that of the girl facing
+him, the sheer panic-stricken terror of her crouching companion, all
+told him as much. Nor was it hard to guess the meaning of that dramatic
+moment he had by chance chosen for his entrance. His alert eyes took in
+every detail, asked questions but answered none, and in the end ignored
+much.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded one of the miners.
+
+"Been out to the Jack Pot and was on my way back to town. Got caught in
+the storm and struck for the nearest shelter. A bad night out,
+Trefoyle." He closed the door, moved forward into the room, and threw
+off his heavy overcoat.
+
+Moya had recognized him from the first instant. Now Joyce too saw who he
+was. She twisted lithely from the bed, slipped past Moya, past the
+miners, and with the sob of a frightened child caught at his hand and
+arm.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kilmeny, save us ... save us!"
+
+Jack nodded reassuringly. "It's all right. Don't worry."
+
+She clung to him, shivering back to self-control. This man's presence
+spelled safety. In the high-laced boots of a mining man, he showed a
+figure well-knit and graceful, springy with youth, but carrying the
+poise of power. His clean-cut bronzed face backed the promise; so too
+did the ease of his bearing.
+
+Moya gave a deep sigh of relief and sat down on the edge of the bed,
+grown suddenly faint. At last her burden was lifted to stronger
+shoulders.
+
+"You ain't wanted here, Jack Kilmeny," the standing miner said sourly.
+He was undecided what to do, perplexed and angry at this unexpected
+hindrance.
+
+"Seems to be a difference of opinion about that, Peale," retorted the
+newcomer lightly, kicking snow from the spurs and the heels of his
+boots.
+
+"Trefoyle and me own this cabin. You'll sing small, by Goad, or you'll
+get out."
+
+"You wouldn't put a dog out on a night like this, let alone a man. It
+would be murder," Kilmeny answered mildly.
+
+"There's horses in the tunnel. You can bed wi' them."
+
+Jack glanced around, took in the whisky bottle and their red-rimmed
+eyes. He nodded agreement.
+
+"Right you are, boys. We three will move over to the tunnel and leave
+the house to the women."
+
+"You ain't got the say here, not by a domned sight, Jack Kilmeny.
+This'll be the way of it. You'll git out. We'll stay. Understand?" Peale
+ground out between set teeth.
+
+Jack smiled, but his eyes were like steel. "Suppose we go over to the
+shaft-house and talk it over, boys. We'll all understand it better
+then."
+
+Kilmeny still stood close to the red-hot stove. He was opening and
+closing his fingers to take the stiffness of the frost out of them.
+
+"By Goad, no! You go--we stay. See?"
+
+The young man was now rubbing industriously the thumb and forefinger of
+his right hand with the palm of his left.
+
+"No, I don't see that, Peale. Doesn't sound reasonable to me. But I'll
+talk it over with you both--in the shaft-house."
+
+Jack's eyes were fastened steadily on Peale. The man was standing close
+to a shelf in a corner of the cabin. The shelf was in the shadow, but
+Kilmeny guessed what lay upon it. He was glad that though his legs were
+still stiff and cold the fingers of his right hand had been massaged to
+a supple warmth.
+
+"You be warm now, lad. Clear out," warned the big Cornishman.
+
+"Build 'ee a fire in the tunnel, mon," suggested Trefoyle.
+
+"We'll all go or we'll all stay. Drop that, Peale."
+
+The last words rang out in sharp command. Quicker than the eye could
+follow Kilmeny's hand had brushed up past his hip and brought with it a
+shining thirty-eight.
+
+Taken by surprise, Peale stood stupidly, his hand still on the shelf.
+His fingers had closed on a revolver, but they had found the barrel
+instead of the butt.
+
+"Step forward to the table, Peale--_with your hand empty_. That's right.
+Now listen. These young women have got to sleep. They're fagged to
+exhaustion. We three are going over to the shaft-house. Anything you've
+got to say to me can be said there. Understand?"
+
+The man stood in a stubborn sullen silence, but his partner spoke up.
+
+"No guns along, Kilmeny, eh?"
+
+"No. We'll leave them here."
+
+"Good enough, eh, Peale?"
+
+Trefoyle's small eyes glittered. Slyly he winked to his partner to
+agree, then got a lantern, lit it clumsily, and shuffled out with Peale
+at his heels.
+
+Joyce clung to Jack's arm, bewitchingly helpless and dependent. A queer
+thrill went through him at the touch of her soft finger tips.
+
+"You won't leave us," she implored. "You wouldn't, would you?"
+
+"Only for a little while. Bolt the door. Don't open it unless I give the
+word." He stepped across to Moya and handed her his revolver. In a very
+low voice he spoke to her. "Remember. You're not to open unless I tell
+you to let me in. If they try to break the door shoot through it at them
+waist high. _Shoot to kill._ Promise me that."
+
+Her dark eyes met and searched his. The faintest quiver of the lip
+showed that she knew what was before him. "I promise," she said in the
+same low voice.
+
+Moya bolted the door after him and sat down trembling by the table, the
+revolver in her shaking hand. She knew he had gone to fight for them and
+that he had left his weapon behind according to agreement. He was going
+against odds just as his father had done before him in that memorable
+fight years ago. If they beat him they would probably kill him. And what
+chance had one slender man against two such giants. She shuddered.
+
+"What are they going to do, Moya?" whispered Joyce.
+
+Her friend looked at her steadily. "Didn't you hear? They said they
+wanted to talk over the arrangements."
+
+"Yes, but--didn't it seem to you----? Why did he give you that pistol?"
+
+"Oh, just so that we wouldn't be afraid."
+
+Hand in hand they sat. Their hearts beat like those of frightened
+rabbits. The wail of the wind screaming outside seemed the cry of lost
+souls. Was murder being done out there while they waited?
+
+Kilmeny strode after the Cornishmen with the light-footed step of a
+night nurse. Beside the huge miners he looked slight, but the flow of
+his rippling muscles was smooth and hard as steel. He had been in many a
+rough and tumble fray. The saying went in Goldbanks that he "had the
+guts" and could whip his weight in wildcats. There was in him the
+fighting edge, that stark courage which shakes the nerve of a man of
+lesser mettle. He knew that to-night he needed it if ever he did. For
+these men were strong as bears and had as little remorse.
+
+Inside the shaft-house, his quick glance swept the dimly lighted room
+and took in every detail.
+
+Trefoyle put the lantern down on a shelf and turned to the man who had
+interfered with them. "Is't a fight ye want, mon?"
+
+Kilmeny knew the folly of attempting argument or appeal to their sense
+of right. Straight to business he cut. "I'm not hunting one. But I
+reckon this is up to me. I'll take you one at a time--unless you'd
+rather try it two to one and make sure."
+
+His sneer stung. Peale tore off his coat with an angry roar.
+
+"By Goad, I'm good enough for you."
+
+Head down like a bull, he rushed at his foe. Jack sidestepped and lashed
+out at him as he shot past. Peale went down heavily, but scrambled
+awkwardly to his feet and flung himself forward again. This time Kilmeny
+met him fairly with a straight left, tilted back the shaggy head, and
+crossed with the right to the point of the jaw.
+
+As the fellow went to the floor the second time Jack was struck heavily
+on the side of his face and knocked from his feet upon the body of the
+Cornishman. Even as he fell Kilmeny knew that Trefoyle had broken faith.
+He rolled over quickly, so that the latter, throwing himself heavily on
+top of him, kneed his partner instead of Jack.
+
+His great hands gripped the young man as he wriggled away. By sheer
+strength they dragged him back. Kilmeny wrapped his legs around Trefoyle
+to turn over. He heard a groan and guessed the reason. The muscular legs
+clenched tighter the man above him, moved slowly up and down those of
+his foe. With a cry of pain the Cornishman flung himself to one side and
+tore loose. His trouser legs were ripped from thigh to calf and blood
+streamed down the limb. The sharp rowels of Kilmeny's spurs had sunk
+into the flesh and saved their owner.
+
+Jack staggered to his feet half dazed. Peale was slowly rising, his
+murderous eyes fixed on the young man. The instinct of self-preservation
+sent the latter across the room to a pile of steel drills. As the two
+men followed he stooped, caught up one of the heavy bars, and thrust
+with a short-arm movement for Trefoyle's head. The man threw out his
+hands and keeled over like a stuck pig.
+
+Kilmeny threw away his drill and fought it out with Peale. They might
+have been compared to a rapier and a two-handed broadsword. Jack was
+more than a skilled boxer. He was a cool punishing fighter, one who
+could give as well as take. Once Peale cornered him, bent evidently on
+closing and crushing his ribs with a terrific bear hug. It would have
+been worth a dozen lessons from a boxing master to see how the young man
+fought him back with jabs and uppercuts long enough to duck under the
+giant's arm to safety.
+
+The wild swinging blows of the Cornishman landed heavily from time to
+time, but his opponent's elbow or forearm often broke the force. The
+lighter man was slippery as an eel, as hard to hit as a Corbett.
+Meanwhile, he was cutting his foe to ribbons, slashing at him with swift
+drives that carried the full force of one hundred seventy-five pounds,
+sending home damaging blows to the body that played the mischief with
+his wind. The big miner's face was a projection map with wheals for
+mountains and with rivers represented by red trickles of blood.
+
+Quartering round the room they came again to the drills. Peale, panting
+and desperate, stooped for one of them. As he rose unsteadily Kilmeny
+closed, threw him hard, and fell on top. Jack beat savagely the swollen
+upturned face with short arm jolts until the fellow relaxed his hold
+with a moan.
+
+"Doan't 'ee kill me, mon. I've had enough," he grunted.
+
+Kilmeny sprang to his feet, caught up the bar of steel, and poked the
+prostrate man in the ribs with it.
+
+"Get up," he ordered. "You're a pair of cowardly brutes. Can't be decent
+to a couple of helpless women in your power. Can't play fair in a fight
+with a man half the size of one of you. Get up, I say, and throw a
+dipperful of water in Trefoyle's face. He's not dead by a long shot,
+though he deserves to be."
+
+Peale clambered to his feet in sulky submission and did as he was told.
+Slowly Trefoyle's eyelids flickered open.
+
+"What be wrong wi' un?" he asked, trying to sit up.
+
+"You got what was coming to you. Is it enough, or do you want more?"
+
+"Did 'ee hit me, lad. Fegs, it's enough. I give you best."
+
+"Then get up. We'll go back to the house for blankets and fuel. You'll
+sleep to-night with the horses in the tunnel."
+
+The two girls shivering in the hot room heard the footsteps of the
+returning men as they crunched the snow. Moya sat opposite the door,
+white to the lips, her hand resting on the table and holding the
+revolver. Joyce had sunk down on the bed and had covered her face with
+her hands.
+
+A cheerful voice called to them from outside.
+
+"All right. Everything settled. Let us in, please."
+
+Moya flew to the door and unbolted it. The Cornishmen came in first, and
+after them Kilmeny. At sight of the ravages of war Joyce gave a little
+cry of amazement. The big miners were covered with blood. They had the
+cowed hangdog look of thoroughly beaten men. Jack's face too was a
+sight, but he still walked springily.
+
+He gave curt commands and the others obeyed him without a word. Almost
+the first thing he did was to step to the table and fling the whisky
+bottle through the door into the storm.
+
+"We'll not need that," he said.
+
+One of the miners gathered up their extra blankets while the other took
+a load of firewood.
+
+As soon as they had gone Joyce cried breathlessly, "You fought them."
+
+Jack looked at her and his eyes softened. All men answered to the appeal
+of her beauty. "We had a little argument. They couldn't see it my way.
+But they're satisfied now."
+
+Moya bit her lower lip. Her eyes were shining with tears. A queer
+emotion welled up in her heart. But it was Joyce who put their thanks
+into words.
+
+"You saved us. You're the bravest man I ever saw," she cried.
+
+A deeper color rose to the embarrassed face of the young man. "I expect
+you didn't need any saving to speak of. The boys got too ambitious.
+That's about all." He was thinking that she was the most beautiful
+creature he had ever set eyes upon and thanking his lucky stars that he
+had come along in the nick of time.
+
+"You can _say_ that, Mr. Kilmeny, but we know," she answered softly.
+
+"All right. Have it your own way, Miss Seldon," he returned with a
+smile.
+
+"You'll let us doctor your wounds, won't you?" Moya asked shyly.
+
+He laughed like a boy. "You're making me ashamed. I haven't any wounds.
+I ought to have washed the blood off before I came in, but I didn't
+have a chance. All I need is a basin of water and a towel."
+
+The girl ran to get them for him. He protested, laughing, but was none
+the less pleased while they hovered about him.
+
+"Such a dirty towel. Don't you suppose there's a clean one somewhere,"
+Joyce said with a little _moue_ of disgust as she handed it to him.
+
+He shook his head. "It's like the one in 'The Virginian'--been too
+popular."
+
+Moya gave him the scarf that had been around her head while she was
+riding. "Take this. No.... I want you to use it ... please."
+
+After he had dried his face Jack explained their disposition for the
+night.
+
+"We'll stay in the tunnel. You'll be alone here--and quite safe. No need
+to be in the least nervous. Make yourselves comfortable till morning if
+you can."
+
+"And you--do you mean that you're going back ... to those men?" Moya
+asked.
+
+"They're quite tame--ready to eat out of my hand. Don't worry about me."
+
+"But I don't want you to go. I'm afraid to be alone. Stay here with us,
+Mr. Kilmeny. I don't care about sleeping," Joyce begged.
+
+"There's nothing to be afraid of--and you need your sleep. I'll not be
+far away. You couldn't be safer in Goldbanks. I'll be on guard all
+night, you know," he reassured.
+
+It escaped him for the moment that Joyce was thinking about her own
+safety, while Moya was anxious about his, but later he was to remember
+it.
+
+He had not been gone ten minutes before Joyce was sound asleep. She
+trusted him and she trusted Moya, and for her that was enough. All her
+life she had relied on somebody else to bear the brunt of her troubles.
+But the girl with the powdered freckles beneath the dusky eyes carried
+her own burdens. She too had implicit confidence in the champion who had
+come out of the storm to help them and had taken his life in hand to do
+it. Her heart went out to him with all the passionate ardor of generous
+youth. She had never met such a man, so strong, so masterful, and yet so
+boyish.
+
+Her brain was far too active for slumber. She sat before the stove and
+went over the adventures of the past two hours. How strange that they
+had met him again in this dramatic fashion. Perhaps he lived at
+Goldbanks now and they would see more of him. She hoped so mightily,
+even though there persisted in her mind a picture of his blue-gray eyes
+paying homage to Joyce.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+SHOT TO THE CORE WITH SUNLIGHT
+
+
+The storm had blown itself out before morning. A white world sparkled
+with flashes of sunlight when Moya opened the door of the cabin and
+gazed out. Looking down into the peaceful valley below, it was hard to
+believe that death had called to them so loudly only a few hours
+earlier.
+
+Kilmeny emerged from the shaft-house and called a cheerful good-morning
+across to her.
+
+"How did you sleep?" he shouted as he crunched across the snow toward
+her.
+
+"Not so very well. Joyce slept for both of us."
+
+Their smiles met. They had been comrades in the determination to shield
+her from whatever difficulties the situation might hold.
+
+"I'm glad. Is she quite herself this morning? Last night she was very
+tired and a good deal alarmed."
+
+"Yes. After you came Joyce did not worry any more. She knew you would
+see that everything came right."
+
+The color crept into his bronzed face. "Did she say so?"
+
+"Yes. But it was not what she said. I could tell."
+
+"I'm glad I could do what I did."
+
+The eyes that looked at him were luminous. Something sweet and mocking
+glowed in them inscrutably. He knew her gallant soul approved him, and
+his heart lifted with gladness. The beauty of her companion fascinated
+him, but he divined in this Irish girl the fine thread of loyalty that
+lifted her character out of the commonplace. Her slender, vivid
+personality breathed a vigor of the spirit wholly engaging.
+
+Joyce joined her friend in the doorway. With her cheeks still flushed
+from sleep and her hair a little disheveled, she reminded Jack of a
+beautiful crumpled rose leaf. Since her charm was less an expression of
+an inner quality, she needed more than Moya the adventitious aids of
+dress.
+
+The young woman's smile came out warmly at sight of Kilmeny. It was her
+custom always to appropriate the available man. Toward this bronzed
+young fellow with the splendid throat sloping into muscular shoulders
+she felt very kindly this morning. He had stood between her and trouble.
+He was so patently an admirer of Joyce Seldon. And on his own merits the
+virility and good looks of him drew her admiration. At sight of the
+bruises on his face her heart beat a little fast with pleasurable
+excitement. He had fought for her like a man. She did not care if he was
+a workingman. His name was Kilmeny. He was a gentleman by birth, worth a
+dozen Verinders.
+
+"Mr. Kilmeny, how can we ever thank you?"
+
+He looked at her and nodded gayly. "Forget it, Miss Seldon. I couldn't
+have done less."
+
+"Or more," she added softly, her lovely eyes in his.
+
+No change showed in the lean brown face of the man, but his blood moved
+faster. It was impossible to miss the appeal of sex that escaped at
+every graceful movement of the soft sensuous body, that glowed from the
+deep still eyes in an electric current flashing straight to his veins.
+He would have loved to touch the soft flushed cheek, the crisp amber
+hair clouding the convolutions of the little ears. His eyes were an
+index of the man, bold and possessive and unwavering. They announced him
+a dynamic American, one who walked the way of the strong and fought for
+his share of the spoils. But when she looked at him they softened.
+Something fine and tender transfigured the face and wiped out its
+sardonic recklessness.
+
+"The pressing question before the house is breakfast. There are bacon
+and flour and coffee here. Shall I make a batch of biscuits and offer
+you pot luck? Or do you prefer to wait till we can get to Goldbanks?"
+
+"What do you think?" Moya asked.
+
+"I think whatever you think. We'll not reach town much before noon. If
+you can rough it for a meal I should advise trying out the new cook. It
+really depends on how hungry you are."
+
+"I'm hungry enough to eat my boots," the Irish girl announced promptly.
+
+"So am I. Let's stay--if our hosts won't object," Joyce added.
+
+"I'm quite sure they won't," Kilmeny replied dryly. "All right. A camp
+breakfast it is."
+
+"I'm going to help you," Moya told him.
+
+"Of course. You'd better wash the dishes as soon as we get hot water.
+They're probably pretty grimy."
+
+He stepped into the cabin and took off his coat. Moya rolled up her
+sleeves to the elbows of her plump dimpled arms. Miss Seldon hovered
+about helplessly and wanted to know what she could do.
+
+The miner had not "batched" in the hills for years without having
+learned how to cook. His biscuits came to the table hot and flaky, his
+bacon was done to a turn. Even the chicory coffee tasted delicious to
+the hungry guests.
+
+With her milk-white skin, her vivid crimson lips so exquisitely turned,
+and the superb vitality of her youth, Joyce bloomed in the sordid hut
+like a flower in a rubbage heap. To her bronzed _vis-a-vis_ it seemed
+that the world this morning was shimmering romance. Never before had he
+enjoyed a breakfast half as much. He and Miss Seldon did most of the
+talking, while Moya listened, the star flash in her eyes and the
+whimsical little smile on her lips.
+
+Joyce was as gay as a lark. She chattered with the childish artlessness
+that at times veiled her sophistication. Jack was given to understand
+that she loved to be natural and simple, that she detested the shams of
+social convention to which she was made to conform. Her big lovely eyes
+were wistful in their earnestness as they met his. It was not wholly a
+pose with her. For the moment she meant all she said. A delightful
+excitement fluttered her pulses. She was playing the game she liked
+best, moving forward to the first skirmishes of that sex war which was
+meat and drink to her vanity. The man attracted her as few men ever had.
+That nothing could come of it beyond the satisfaction of the hour did
+not mitigate her zest for the battle.
+
+They were still at breakfast when one of the Cornishmen pushed open the
+door and looked in. He stood looking down on them sullenly without
+speaking.
+
+"Want to see me, Peale?" asked Kilmeny.
+
+"Did I say I wanted to see 'ee?" demanded the other roughly.
+
+"Better come in and shut the door. The air's chilly."
+
+The battered face of his companion loomed over the shoulder of Peale. To
+Kilmeny it was plain that they had come with the idea of making
+themselves disagreeable. Very likely they had agreed to force their
+company upon the young women for breakfast. But the sight of their
+dainty grace, together with Jack's cheerful invitation, was too much for
+their audacity. Peale grumbled something inaudible and turned away,
+slamming the door as he went.
+
+The young miner laughed softly. If he had shown any unwillingness they
+would have pushed their way in. His urbanity had disarmed them.
+
+"They're not really bad men, you know--just think they are," he
+explained casually.
+
+"I'm afraid of them. I don't trust them," Joyce shuddered.
+
+"Well, I trust them while they're under my eye. The trouble with men of
+that stripe is that they're yellow. A game man gives you a fighting
+chance, but fellows of this sort hit while you're not looking. But you
+needn't worry. They're real tame citizens this morning."
+
+"Yes, they looked tame," Moya answered dryly. "So tame I'm sure they'd
+like to crucify you."
+
+"I daresay they would, but in this world a man can't get everything he
+would like. I've wanted two or three pleasures myself that I didn't
+get."
+
+His gaze happened to turn toward Joyce as he was speaking. He had been
+thinking of nothing definite, but at the meeting of their eyes something
+flashed into birth and passed from one to the other like an electric
+current. Jack knew now something that he wanted, but he did not admit
+that he could not get it. If she cared for him--and what else had her
+eyes told him in the golden glow of that electric moment?--a hundred
+Verinders and Lady Farquhar could not keep them apart.
+
+His heart sang jubilantly. He rose abruptly and left the room because he
+was afraid he could not veil his feeling.
+
+Joyce smiled happily. "Where is he going?" she asked innocently.
+
+Moya looked at her and then turned her eyes away. She had understood the
+significance of what she had seen and a door in her heart that had been
+open for weeks clanged shut.
+
+"I don't know, unless to get the horses," she said quietly.
+
+A few minutes later he returned, leading the animals. From the door of
+the shaft-house the Cornishmen watched them mount and ride away. The men
+smoked in sullen silence.
+
+[Illustration: THEY RODE THROUGH A WORLD SHOT TO THE CORE WITH SUNLIGHT.
+THE SNOW SPARKLED AND GLEAMED WITH IT. (p. 177)]
+
+Before they had ridden a hundred yards Joyce was in gay talk with
+Kilmeny. She had forgotten the very existence of the miners. But Moya
+did not forget. She had seen the expression of their faces as the horses
+had passed. If a chance ever offered itself they would have their
+revenge.
+
+It was a day winnowed from a lifetime of ordinary ones. They rode
+through a world shot to the core with sunlight. The snow sparkled and
+gleamed with it. The foliage of the cottonwoods, which already had
+shaken much of their white coat to the ground, reflected it in greens
+and golds and russets merged to a note of perfect harmony by the Great
+Artist. Though the crispness of early winter was in the air, their
+nostrils drew in the fragrance of October, the faint wafted perfume of
+dying summer.
+
+Beneath a sky of perfect blue they pushed along the shoulder of the
+hill, avoiding the draw into which snow had drifted deep. Life stormed
+in their veins, glowed in their flushed cheeks, rang in the care-free
+laughter of at least two of them. Jack broke trail, turning often in the
+saddle with a lithe twist of his lean muscular body, to suggest a word
+of caution at the bad places. Always then he discovered the deep violet
+eyes of Joyce Seldon with their smoldering fire. To let himself dwell
+upon her loveliness of fine-textured satiny skin, set off by the
+abundant crown of lustrous bronze hair, was to know again a quickened
+pulse of delight.
+
+When he spoke it was with the languid drawl of the Western plainsman. In
+humor he feigned to conceal his passion, but Joyce knew him to be
+alertly conscious of her every word, every turn of her pliant body.
+
+They reached the road, where two could ride abreast. Sometimes he was
+with the one, again with the other. Moya, who had not much to say this
+morning, made it easy for him to be with Joyce. She did not need to be
+told that he was under the allure of that young woman's beauty; and not
+alone of her beauty, but of that provocative stimulating something that
+can be defined only as the drag of sex. All men responded to it when
+Joyce chose to exert herself, many when she did not.
+
+Once he turned to point out to Moya some snow-covered mounds above the
+road.
+
+"Graves of a dozen mule-skinners killed by Indians nearly thirty years
+ago. My father was the only one of the party that escaped."
+
+Half a mile from town they met two men on horseback and exchanged news.
+All Goldbanks had been searching for them through the night. The
+Farquhar party were wild with anxiety about them.
+
+Kilmeny gave prompt quiet orders. "Get back to town, boys, and tell Lady
+Farquhar that it's all right. We'll be along in a few minutes."
+
+The news of their safety spread as by magic. Men and women and children
+poured into the streets to welcome them. It was as much as Kilmeny
+could do to keep back the cheering mob long enough to reach the hotel.
+Verinder, Lady Jim, and India came down the steps to meet them, Captain
+Kilmeny and Lord Farquhar both being away at the head of search parties.
+India and Lady Farquhar broke down without shame and cried as they
+embraced the returned wanderers.
+
+"We thought ... we thought...." India could not finish in words, but
+Moya knew what she meant.
+
+"It was very nearly that way, dear, but everything is all right now,"
+her friend smiled through a film of tears.
+
+"It was Moya saved us--and afterward Mr. Kilmeny," Joyce explained
+between sobs.
+
+The crowd below cheered again and Moya borrowed India's handkerchief to
+wave. It touched her to see how glad these people were to know they had
+been rescued.
+
+Lady Farquhar thanked Kilmeny with a gulp in her throat. "We'll want to
+hear all about it and to get a chance to thank you properly. Will you
+come to dinner this evening? Joyce and Moya should be rested by then."
+
+Jack accepted promptly. "I'll be very glad to come."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"PROVE IT!... PROVE IT!"
+
+
+Sam Bleyer, superintendent of the big Verinder mines, had been up to see
+his chief at the hotel and was passing the private sitting-room of the
+Farquhar party when a voice hailed him. He bowed inclusively to Lady
+Farquhar, Miss Seldon, and Miss Dwight.
+
+"You called me?"
+
+"I did. Are you in a very great hurry?" Joyce flashed her most
+coquettish smile at him.
+
+"You are never to be in a hurry when Miss Seldon wants you, Bleyer,"
+announced Verinder, following the superintendent into the room.
+
+Bleyer flushed. He was not "a lady's man," as he would have phrased it,
+but there was an arresting loveliness about Joyce that held the eye.
+
+"You hear my orders, Miss Seldon," he said.
+
+"Awfully good of you, Mr. Verinder," Joyce acknowledged with a swift
+slant smile toward the mine owner. "Just now I want Mr. Bleyer to be an
+information bureau."
+
+"Anything I can do," murmured Bleyer.
+
+He was a thin little man with a face as wrinkled as a contour map of
+South America. Thick glasses rested on a Roman nose in front of
+nearsighted eyes. Frequently he peered over these in an ineffective
+manner that suggested a lost puppy in search of a friend. But in spite
+of his appearance Bleyer was a force in Goldbanks. He knew his business
+and gave his whole energies to it.
+
+"We're all so interested in Mr. Kilmeny. Tell us _all_ about him,
+please."
+
+"That's a rather large order, isn't it?" The wrinkles in his leathery
+face broke into a smile. "What in particular do you want to know?"
+
+"Everything. What does he do? How does he live? How long has he been
+here?"
+
+"He has been around here about five years. He has a lease in a mine."
+There was a flinty dryness in the manner of the superintendent that
+neither Joyce nor Moya missed.
+
+"And he makes his living by it?"
+
+Above his spectacles the eyes of Bleyer gleamed resentfully. "You'll
+have to ask Mr. Kilmeny how he makes his living. I don't know."
+
+"You're keeping something from us. I believe you do know, Mr. Bleyer."
+With a swift turn of her supple body Joyce appealed to Verinder. "Make
+him tell us, please."
+
+Moya did not lift the starlike eyes that were so troubled from the face
+of Bleyer. She knew the man implied something discreditable to Kilmeny.
+The look that had flashed between him and Verinder told her so much. Red
+signals of defiance blazed on both cheeks. Whatever it was, she did not
+intend to believe him.
+
+Verinder disclosed a proper reluctance. "Bleyer says he doesn't know."
+
+"Oh, he _says!_ I want him to tell what he thinks."
+
+"You won't like it," the mine owner warned.
+
+"I'll be the best judge of that." Joyce swung upon Bleyer. "You hear,
+sir. You're to tell me what you mean."
+
+"I don't mean anything." He paused, then looked straight at Joyce with a
+visible harshness. "I'll tell you what the common gossip is if you want
+to know, Miss Seldon. They say he is a highgrader."
+
+"And what is a highgrader?" demanded Moya.
+
+"A highgrader is one who steals rich ore from the mine where he works,"
+answered Verinder smugly.
+
+Moya, eyes hot and shining, flashed her challenge at him. "I don't
+believe it--not a word of it, so far as Mr. Kilmeny is concerned."
+
+"Afraid that doesn't change the facts, Miss Dwight. It's a matter of
+general knowledge." Beneath Verinder's bland manner there lurked a
+substratum of triumph.
+
+"General fiddlesticks! Don't believe it, Joyce," cried Moya stormily.
+"He doesn't even work as a miner. He owns his own lease."
+
+"He used to work in the mines, even if he doesn't now. There are
+stories----"
+
+"Ridiculous to think it of Mr. Kilmeny," exploded Moya. "We've done
+nothing but insult him ever since we've known him. First he was a
+highwayman. Now he is a thief. Anything else, Mr. Verinder?"
+
+"Everybody knows it," retorted Verinder sulkily.
+
+"Then prove it. Put him in prison. Aren't there any laws in the state?
+If everybody knows it, why isn't he arrested?" the Irish girl flamed.
+
+"Moya," chided Lady Farquhar gently.
+
+Her ward turned upon Lady Jim a flushed face stirred by anger to a vivid
+charm. "Can't you see how absurd it is? He owns his own lease. Mr.
+Bleyer admits it. Is he robbing himself, then?"
+
+The muscles stood out on the cheeks of the superintendent like cords. He
+stuck doggedly to his guns. "I didn't say he stole the ore himself. The
+charge is that he buys it from the men who do take it. His lease is an
+excuse. Of course he pretends to get the ore there."
+
+"It's the common talk of the camp," snapped Verinder contemptuously.
+"The man doesn't even keep it under decent cover."
+
+"Then prove it ... prove it! That ought to be easy--since everybody
+knows it." Moya's voice was low, but her scornful passion lashed the
+Englishman as with a whip.
+
+"By Jove, that's just what I'm going to do. I'm going to put our friend
+behind the bars for a few years," the smug little man cried
+triumphantly.
+
+The red spots on Moya's cheeks burned. The flashing eyes of the girl
+defied her discarded lover.
+
+"If you can," she amended with quiet anger.
+
+The soft laugh of Joyce saved for the moment the situation. "Dear me,
+aren't we getting a little excited? Mr. Bleyer, tell me more. How does
+a--a highgrader, didn't you call him?--how does he get a chance to steal
+the ore?"
+
+"He picks out the best pieces while he is working--the nuggets that are
+going to run a high per cent. of gold--and pockets them. At night he
+carries them away."
+
+"But--haven't you any policemen here? Why don't you stop them and search
+them?"
+
+"The miners' union is too strong. There would be a strike if we tried
+it. But it has got to come to that soon. The companies will have to join
+hands for a finish fight. They can't have men hoisted up from their work
+with a hundred dollars' worth of ore stowed away on them."
+
+"Is it as bad as that, Mr. Bleyer?" asked Lady Farquhar in surprise.
+
+"Sometimes they take two or three hundred dollars' worth at once."
+
+"They don't all steal, do they?" demanded Moya with an edge of sarcasm
+in her clear voice.
+
+Bleyer laughed grimly. "I'd like to know the names of even a few that
+don't. I haven't been introduced to them."
+
+"One hundred per cent. dishonest," murmured Moya without conviction.
+
+"I don't guarantee the figures, Miss Dwight." The superintendent added
+grudgingly: "They don't look at it that way. Bits of high-grade ore are
+their perquisite, they pretend to think."
+
+Verinder broke in. "They say your friend Kilmeny took ore to the value
+of two thousand dollars from the Never Quit on one occasion. It ran to
+that amount by actual smelter test, the story goes. I've always rather
+doubted it."
+
+"Why--since he is so dishonest?" Moya flung at him.
+
+"Don't think a man could carry away so much at one time. What d'ye
+think, Bleyer?"
+
+"Depends on how high-grade ore the mine carries. At Cripple Creek we
+found nearly four thousand on a man once. He was loaded down like a
+freight car--looked like the fat boy in 'Pickwick Papers.'"
+
+"Should think he'd bulge out with angles where the rock projected," Lady
+Farquhar suggested.
+
+"The men have it down to a system there. We used to search them as they
+left work. They carry the ore in all sorts of unexpected places, such as
+the shoulder padding of their coats, their mouths, their ears, and in
+slings scattered over the body. The ore is pounded so that it does not
+bulge."
+
+"Perhaps I'm doing Mr. Kilmeny an injustice, then. Very likely he did
+get away with two thousand at one time," Verinder jeered with an
+unpleasant laugh.
+
+"Yes, let's think the worst of everybody that we can, Mr. Verinder,"
+came Moya's quick scornful retort.
+
+The Croesus of Goldbanks stood warming himself with his back to the
+grate, as smug and dapper a little man as could be found within a day's
+journey.
+
+"Very good, Miss Dwight. Have it your own way. I'm not a bally prophet,
+you know, but I'll go this far. Your little tin hero is riding for a
+fall. It's all very well for him to do the romantic and that sort of
+piffle, by Jove, but when you scrape the paint off he's just a receiver
+of stolen property and a common agitator. Don't take my word for it. Ask
+Bleyer." Without looking at him he gave a little jerk of the head toward
+his superintendent. "Who is the most undesirable citizen here, Bleyer?
+Who makes all the trouble for the companies?"
+
+Bleyer shook his head. "I can't back my opinion with proof."
+
+"You know what people say. Whom do the men rely on to back them whenever
+they have trouble with us? Out with it."
+
+"Kilmeny is their king pin--the most influential man in camp."
+
+"Of course he is. Anybody could tell to look at him that he is a leader.
+Does it follow he must be a criminal?" Moya demanded abruptly.
+
+The superintendent smiled. He understood what was behind that
+irritation. "You're a good friend, Miss Dwight."
+
+"It's absurd that I am. He did nothing for Joyce and me--except fight
+for us and see that we were sheltered and fed and brought home safely.
+Why shouldn't we sit still and let his reputation be torn to tatters?"
+
+Bluecher bore down upon the field of Waterloo. "Of course we're 'for' Mr.
+Kilmeny, as you Yankees say. I don't care whether he is a highgrader or
+not. He's a gentleman--and very interesting." Joyce nodded decisively,
+tilting a saucy chin toward Verinder. "We're _for_ him, aren't we,
+Moya?"
+
+Lady Farquhar smiled and let her embroidery drop to the table as she
+rose. "I like him myself. There's something about him that's very
+attractive. I do hope you are wrong, Mr. Bleyer. He does not look like
+an anarchist and a thief."
+
+"That is not the way he would define himself. In this community
+highgrading isn't looked on as theft. Last year our sheriff was
+suspected of buying ore from miners and shipping it to the smelters.
+Public opinion does not greatly condemn the practice." Bleyer, bowing as
+he spoke, excused himself and withdrew.
+
+Verinder appealed to Lady Farquhar. The indignation of the newly rich
+sat heavily upon him. With all his little soul he disliked Jack Kilmeny.
+Since the man had done so signal a service for Joyce, jealousy gnawed at
+his heart.
+
+"Of course we've got to be decent to the man, I suppose. He had a big
+slice of luck in getting the chance to help Miss Seldon and Miss Dwight.
+And I don't forget that he is a cousin to our friends. If it wasn't for
+that I'd say to mail him a check and wipe the slate clean. But of
+course----"
+
+"You'd never dare," breathed Moya tensely. "I won't have him insulted."
+
+"Of course not, under the circumstances. No need to get volcanic, Miss
+Dwight. I merely suggested what I'd like to do. Now the burden is off my
+shoulders. I have given you the facts."
+
+"You've given us only suspicions, Mr. Verinder. I don't think it would
+be fair to assume them correct," the chaperone answered.
+
+But Moya knew that Verinder had dropped his seed in fruitful soil. Lady
+Farquhar would not forget. Jack Kilmeny's welcome would be something
+less than cordial henceforth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A HIGHGRADER--IN PRINCIPLE
+
+
+In spite of the warm defense she had made of Kilmeny, the heart of Moya
+was troubled. She knew him to be reckless. The boundaries of ethical
+conduct were not the same for him as for Lord Farquhar, for instance. He
+had told her as much in those summer days by the Gunnison when they were
+first adventuring forth to friendship. His views on property and on the
+struggle between capital and labor were radical. Could it be that they
+carried him as far as this, that he would take ore to which others had
+title?
+
+The strange phase of the situation was that nobody in Goldbanks seemed
+to give any consideration to the moral issue. If rumor were true, the
+district attorney and a good many of the business men of the town were
+engaged in disposing of this ore for the miners on a percentage basis.
+Between the miners and the operating companies was war. If a workman
+could get the better of the owners by taking ore that was a point to his
+credit. Even Verinder and Bleyer at bottom regarded the matter as a
+question of strength and not as one of equity.
+
+Moya was still in process of thinking herself and life out. It was to
+her an amazing thing that a whole community should so lose its sense of
+values as to encourage even tacitly what was virtually theft. She did
+not want to pass judgment upon Goldbanks, for she distrusted her horizon
+as narrow. But surely right was right and wrong wrong. Without a stab of
+pain she could not think of Jack Kilmeny as engaged in this illicit
+traffic.
+
+In her heart she was afraid. Bleyer was a man to be trusted, and in
+effect he had said that her friend was a highgrader. Even to admit a
+doubt hurt her conscience as a disloyalty, but her gropings brought no
+certainty of his innocence. It would be in keeping with the man's
+character, as she read it, not to let fear of the consequences hold him
+from any course upon which he was determined. Had he not once warned her
+in his whimsical smiling way that she would have to make "a heap of
+allowances" for him if she were to remain his friend? Was it this to
+which he had referred when he had told her he was likely to disappoint
+her, that a man must live by the code of his fellows and judge right and
+wrong by the circumstances? Explicitly he had given her to understand
+that his standards of honesty would not square with hers, since he lived
+in a rough mining camp where questions had two sides and were not to be
+determined by abstract rule.
+
+As for Joyce, the charges against Kilmeny did not disturb her in the
+least. He might be all they said of him and more; so long as he
+interested her that was enough. Just now her head was full of the young
+man. In the world of her daydreams many suitors floated nebulously. Past
+and present she had been wooed by a sufficient number. But of them all
+not one had moved her pulses as this impossible youth of the unmapped
+desert West had done. Queer errant impulses tugged at her
+well-disciplined mind and stormed the creed of worldliness with which
+she had fenced her heart.
+
+A stroll to view the sunset had been arranged by the young people up
+what was known as Son-of-a-Gun Hill. Moya walked of course with Captain
+Kilmeny, her betrothed. Joyce saw to it that Verinder was paired with
+India, Jack Kilmeny falling to her lot. Since India knew that her escort
+was eager to get with Miss Seldon, she punished his impatience by
+loitering far behind the others.
+
+During the past few days Jack had pushed his tentative suit boldly but
+lightly. He understood that Joyce was flirting with him, but he divined
+that there had been moments when the tide of her emotion had swept the
+young woman from her feet. She was a coquette, of course, but when his
+eyes fell like a plummet into hers they sounded depths beneath the
+surface foam. At such times the beat of the surf sounded in his blood.
+The spell of sex, with all its fire and passion, drew him to this lovely
+creature so prodigal of allure.
+
+The leading couples stood for a moment's breathing space near the
+summit. Beneath them the squalid little town huddled in the draw and ran
+sprawling up the hillsides. Shaft-houses and dumps disfigured even the
+business street.
+
+Joyce gave a laughing little shudder. "Isn't it a horrid little hole?"
+
+Jack looked at her in surprise, but it was Moya that answered.
+
+"Oh, I don't think so, Joyce. Of course it's not pretty, but--doesn't it
+seem to stand for something big and--well, indomitable? Think of all the
+miles of tunnels and stopes, of all the work that has gone into making
+them." She stopped to laugh at her own enthusiasm before she added:
+"Goldbanks stands to me for the hope in the human heart that rises in
+spite of everything. It is the product of an idea."
+
+Miss Seldon gave a little lift to her superb shoulders. "You're
+incurably romantic, Moya. It's only a scramble for money, after all."
+
+"Don't know about that, Miss Seldon," disagreed Captain Kilmeny. "Of
+course it's gold they all want. But gold stands for any number of good
+things, tangible and abstract--success, you know, and home, and love,
+and kiddies, the better development of the race--all that sort of
+thing."
+
+"Is that what it means to the highgraders too?" Joyce let her smiling
+eyes rest with innocent impudence in those of the miner.
+
+Kilmeny showed no sign of discomfiture. His gaze met hers fully and
+steadily. "Something of that sort, I suppose."
+
+"Just what _is_ a highgrader?"
+
+Moya held her breath. The debonair lightness of the question could not
+rob it of its significance. Nobody but Joyce would have dared such a
+home thrust.
+
+Jack laughed dryly. "A highgrader is a miner who saves the company for
+which he works the trouble of having valuable ore smelted."
+
+"But doesn't the ore belong to the company?"
+
+"There's a difference of opinion about that. Legally it does, morally it
+doesn't--not all of it. The man who risks his life and the support of
+his family by working underground is entitled to a share of the profit,
+isn't he?"
+
+"He gets his wages, doesn't he?"
+
+"Enough to live on--if he doesn't want to live too high. But is that all
+he is entitled to? Your friend"--he waved a hand toward Verinder,
+puffing up the trail a hundred yards below--"draws millions of dollars
+in dividends from the work of these men. What does he do to earn it?"
+
+"You're a socialist," charged Joyce gayly. "Or is it an anarchist that
+believes such dreadful things?"
+
+"Mr. Kilmeny doesn't quite believe all he says," suggested Moya quietly.
+
+"Don't I?" Behind Jack's quizzical smile there was a hint of
+earnestness. "I believe that Dobyans Verinder is a parasite in
+Goldbanks. He gobbles up the product of others' toil."
+
+Joyce flashed at him a swift retort. "Then if you believe that, you
+ought to be a highgrader yourself."
+
+"Joyce," reproved Moya, aghast.
+
+"I mean, of course, in principle," her friend amended, blushing slightly
+at her own audacity.
+
+Her impudence amused the miner. "Perhaps I am--in principle."
+
+"But only in principle," she murmured, tilting a radiant challenge at
+him.
+
+"Exactly--in principle," he agreed. There was humor in his saturnine
+face.
+
+Joyce ventured one daring step further. "But of course in practice----"
+
+"You should have been a lawyer, Miss Seldon," he countered. "If you
+were, my reply would be that by advice of counsel I must decline to
+answer."
+
+"Oh, by advice of counsel! Dear me, that sounds dreadfully legal,
+doesn't it, Moya? Isn't that what criminals say when----?"
+
+"----When they don't want to give themselves away. I believe it is," he
+tossed back with the same lightness. "Before I make confession I shall
+want to know whether you are on my side--or Verinder's."
+
+Under the steady look of his bold, possessive eyes the long silken
+lashes fell to the soft cheeks. Joyce understood the unvoiced demand
+that lay behind the obvious one. He had thrown down the gage of battle.
+Was she for Verinder or for him? If he could have offered her one-half
+the advantages of his rival, her answer would not have been in doubt.
+But she knew she dared not marry a poor man, no matter how wildly his
+presence could set her pulses flying or how great her longing for him.
+Not the least intention of any romantic absurdity was in her mind. When
+the time came for choice she would go to Verinder and his millions. But
+she did not intend to let Jack Kilmeny go yet.
+
+She lifted to him a face flushed and excited, answering apparently his
+words and not his thoughts. "I haven't decided yet. How can I tell till
+I hear what you have to say for yourself?"
+
+"You couldn't find a more charming sister confessor for your sins," the
+captain told his cousin.
+
+"I'll do my best," Joyce promised. Then, with a flash of friendly
+malice: "But I haven't had the experience of Moya. She is just perfect
+in the role. I know, because she hears all mine."
+
+Moya flushed resentfully. She did not intend to set up for a prude, but
+she certainly did not mean to treat highgrading as if it were a joke. If
+Jack Kilmeny was innocent, why did he not indignantly deny the charge?
+
+"Afraid I'll have to be excused," she said, a little stiffly.
+
+"Miss Dwight doesn't approve of me," explained the miner. "If I
+confessed to her she would probably turn me over to the sheriff."
+
+The girl's quick eyes flashed into his. "I don't approve of taking ore
+that doesn't belong to one--if that's what you mean, Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+Jack liked the flare of temper in her. She was very human in her
+impulses. At bottom, too, he respected the integrity of mind that
+refused to compromise with what she thought was wrong.
+
+But no admission of this showed in his strong brown face. His mordant
+eyes mocked her while he went into a whimsical argument to show that
+highgrading was really a virtue, since it tended to keep the rich from
+growing richer and the poor poorer. He wanted to know by what moral
+right Verinder owned the Mollie Gibson and the Never Quit any more than
+he did.
+
+The mine owner, puffing from the exertions of the last bit of ascent,
+exclaimed indignantly: "Own 'em, by Jove! Doesn't a Johnny own what he
+buys and pays for?"
+
+"You don't suppose that when God or Nature or the First Cause created
+that ore vein a million years ago he had Dobyans Verinder in mind as the
+owner," derided Kilmeny.
+
+"That's all anarchistic rot, you know. Those mines are my property, at
+least a commanding interest. They're mine because I bought the shares.
+Government is founded on a respect for property rights."
+
+"So I've observed," retorted Jack dryly. "I'd back that opinion, too, if
+I owned half of Goldbanks."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Kilmeny's highgrading friends are superior to law. It
+isn't necessary for them to abide by the rules society has found best
+for its protection," Moya suggested.
+
+The engaging smile of the accused rested upon Miss Dwight. "I met you
+and your friends in a motor car yesterday. I'll bet that speedometer
+said twenty-five miles, but the town ordinance puts the speed limit at
+fifteen. What about that?"
+
+"You know that's different. No moral question was involved. But when it
+comes to taking what belongs to another--well, a thief is a thief."
+
+"Right as a rivet, Miss Dwight. But you're begging the question. _Does_
+that ore belong to Dobyans Verinder any more than it does to--well, to
+Jack Kilmeny, say for the sake of argument? I go down there and risk my
+life blasting it out. He----"
+
+"But you don't," interrupted Moya.
+
+"Not to-day perhaps--or yesterday. But I did last year and the year
+before that. I've brought up in my arms the bodies of men torn to pieces
+and carried them to their wives and kiddies. How about those women and
+children? Haven't they earned an interest in the mine? Isn't their moral
+claim greater than that of Mr. Verinder, who sits in London and draws
+the dividends?"
+
+"They are pensioned, aren't they?"
+
+"They are not," returned Jack curtly. "The mine owners of Goldbanks
+don't believe in encouraging negligence. If these workmen hadn't taken
+chances they probably would not have been killed, you see. But if they
+didn't take chances none of the men could earn a living for their
+families. It is plain how very much to blame they are."
+
+Moya looked across the summits of the hills into the brilliant sunset
+that lay like a wonderful canvas in the crotch of the peaks. A troubled
+little frown creased her forehead. For the first time there had come
+home to her the injustice of the social system under which she and her
+friends thrived. No adequate answer came to her. Verinder and Joyce
+joined in argument against the young miner, but Moya did not hear what
+they said.
+
+She was unusually silent on the way home. Once she looked up and asked
+Captain Kilmeny a question.
+
+"After all, two wrongs don't make a right, do they?"
+
+"No, dear girl. Life's full of injustice. I dare say some of the men I
+lead are better than Ned Kilmeny, but I've got to forget that and sit
+tight in the seat that's been dealt me by the cards. If Jack is trying
+to justify highgrading, he hasn't a leg to stand on."
+
+She sighed. "You don't think, do you, that----?"
+
+He answered her broken sentence. "Don't know. He doesn't play the game
+by the same rules we do, but my judgment is that the gossip about him
+has no basis of fact."
+
+The girl he loved gave him one grateful look and fell again into
+silence. She wished she felt more sure. Only that morning she had read
+an editorial in one of the local papers warning the men that the
+operators were determined to suppress highgrading at any cost, even if
+some of the more flagrant offenders had to be sent to the penitentiary.
+That such a fate could befall Jack Kilmeny was unthinkable. Yet what
+more likely than that the managers should choose him for an example if
+they could prove him guilty?
+
+The dusk had fallen over the hills and the lights were glimmering out
+from the town below through the growing darkness. Captain Kilmeny walked
+beside his slim, tall, worshipful sweetheart with a heavy heart. She was
+his promised bride. That she would keep faith he did not doubt. But the
+progress that he made in winning her love was so little that he seemed
+to himself to be marking time. The shadow of his vagabond cousin still
+lay between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ONE MAID--TWO MEN
+
+
+Jack saw to it that he and Joyce followed the others down the trail at a
+very leisurely pace. The early night of the Rockies was already cutting
+them off from the rest of the world. Captain Kilmeny and his betrothed
+could be seen as shadows growing every minute more tenuous. India and
+her escort were already lost in the descending darkness.
+
+It was the first time that the Goldbanks miner had ever been alone with
+Miss Seldon. He meant to make the most of his chance. Her loveliness
+sang its way through his alert, masterful eyes into the blood of the
+man. Where else under heaven could a woman be found with such a glory of
+amber extravagance for hair, with such exquisitely turned scarlet lips
+in so fine-textured colorless a skin of satin? She moved with the
+lightness of perfect health, the long, graceful lines of her limbs
+breaking into new curves at every step. Sinuous and supple, she was
+exquisitely feminine to the finger tips.
+
+They talked little, and that irrelevantly. In both of them the tide of
+emotion ran full. Each was drawn by the subtle irresistible magnet of
+sex attraction. When their eyes met it was but for an instant. A
+shyness, delirious and delightful, ran like a golden thread through the
+excitement which burned their blood.
+
+"We ... must hurry." Joyce breathed deep, as if she had been running.
+
+"Why must we?" he demanded. "This is my hour. I claim it."
+
+"But ... they're getting ahead of us."
+
+"Let them." He gave her his hand to help her down a steep place in the
+trail. Their fingers laced, palm clinging to palm.
+
+"You ... mustn't," she protested.
+
+"Mustn't I?"
+
+"No-o."
+
+The note of faintness was in her voice. Courage flooded him in
+triumphant waves. A moment and his arms were about her, the velvet of
+her cheek against his. She lay still for an instant, pulses throbbing
+wildly. But when his lips found hers the woman in her awoke. In an
+ecstasy of tenderness her arms crept around his neck, and she clung to
+him. A distant sea surf roared in her ears. For the first time in her
+life passion had drowned coquetry.
+
+They spoke in kisses, in caresses, in little murmured nothings, as
+lovers will till the end of time. Something sweet and turbulent swelled
+in her bosom, an emotion new and inexplicable. For the first time in
+many experiences of the sex duel she was afraid of herself, of the
+strength of this impassioned feeling that was sweeping her. She
+disengaged herself from his embrace and stood back.
+
+Beneath the quick probe of his eyes a faint tremor passed through her
+body. The long lashes fell to the hot cheeks and curtained lambent
+windows of light.
+
+"What are we doing?" she cried softly.
+
+"Doing? I'm making love to you, sweetheart, and you're telling me you
+love me for it," he answered, capturing her hands.
+
+"Yes, but ... I don't want you to ... make love to me ... that way."
+
+"You do." He laughed aloud, and with a swift motion drew her to him
+again. "We belong, you witch."
+
+His ardent kisses smothered her and drew the color into her lovely face.
+She yearned toward him, faint with a sweet, exquisite longing. Was this
+love then? Had it at last trapped her in spite of her cool wariness? She
+did not know. All she was sure of was that she wanted to be in his
+strong arms and to feel forever this champagne leap of the blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the excuse that she must dress for dinner, Joyce went at once to
+her room and locked the door. Discarding the walking suit she was
+wearing, she slipped into a negligee gown and seated herself before the
+glass. She liked, while thinking things over, to look at herself in the
+mirror. The picture that she saw always evoked pleasant fugitive
+memories. It was so now. Never had her beauty seemed so radiant and
+vital, so much an inspiration of the spirit in her. Joyce could have
+kissed the parted scarlet lips and the glowing pansy eyes reflected back
+to her. It was good to be young and lovely, to know that men's hearts
+leaped because of her, especially that of the untamed desert son who had
+made love to her so masterfully.
+
+How had he dared? She was a rare imperious queen of hearts. No man
+before had ever ravished kisses from her in such turbulent fashion. When
+she thought of the abandon with which she had given herself to his lips
+and his embrace, the dye deepened on her cheeks. What was this shameless
+longing that had carried her to him as one looking down from a high
+tower is drawn to throw himself over the edge? He had trampled under
+foot the defenses that had availed against many who had a hundred times
+his advantages to offer.
+
+It was of herself, not him, that she was afraid. She had _wanted_ his
+kisses. She had rejoiced in that queer, exultant stir of the blood when
+his eyes stabbed fathoms deep into hers. What was the matter with her?
+Always she had felt a good-natured contempt for girls who threw away
+substantial advantages for what they called love. After steering a
+course as steady as a mariner's compass for years was she going to play
+the fool at last? Was she going to marry a pauper, a workingman, one
+accused of crime, merely because of the ridiculous emotion he excited in
+her?
+
+The idea was of course absurd. The most obvious point of the situation
+to her was that she dared not marry him. In her sober senses she would
+not want to do such a ruinous thing. Already she was beginning to escape
+from the thrill of his physical presence. He had taken the future for
+granted, and during that mad quarter of an hour she had let him. Carried
+away by his impetuosity and her own desire, she had consented to his
+preposterous hopes. But of a certainty the idea was absurd. Joyce Seldon
+was the last woman in the world to make a poor man's wife.
+
+To-morrow she must have a serious talk with him and set the matter on a
+proper footing. She must not let herself be swept away by any quixotic
+sentiment. The trouble was that she liked him so well. When they met,
+her good resolutions would be likely to melt in the air. She would
+safeguard herself from her weakness by telling him during a ride that
+had been planned. With her friends a few yards in front of them there
+could be no danger of yielding to her febrile foolishness.
+
+Or perhaps it would be better to wait. It was now only ten days till the
+time set for leaving. She might write him her decision. It would be
+sweet to hold him as long as she could....
+
+A knock at the door aroused her from revery. She let Fisher in and made
+preparations to have her hair dressed. This was always one of the
+important duties of the day. India and Moya might scamp such things on
+the plea that they were thousands of miles from civilization, but Joyce
+knew what was due her lovely body and saw that the service was paid
+rigorously. She chose to wear to-night a black gown that set off
+wonderfully the soft beauty of her face and the grace of her figure.
+Jack Kilmeny was to be there later for bridge, and before he came she
+had to dazzle and placate Verinder, who had been for several days very
+sulky at having to play second fiddle.
+
+When Joyce sailed down the corridor to the parlor which adjoined the
+private dining-room of the party, she caught a glimpse of Verinder
+turning a corner of the passage toward his room. Lady Farquhar was alone
+in the parlor.
+
+"Didn't I see Mr. Verinder going out?" asked Joyce, sinking indolently
+into the easiest chair and reaching for a magazine.
+
+"Yes. At least he was here." After a moment Lady Farquhar added
+quietly, "He leaves to-morrow."
+
+Joyce looked up quickly. "Leaves where?"
+
+"Goldbanks. He is starting for London."
+
+"But.... What about the reorganization of the companies? I thought...."
+
+"He has changed his plans. James is to have his proxies and to arrange
+the consolidation. Mr. Verinder is anxious to get away at once."
+
+After an instant's consideration Joyce laughed scornfully. She was
+dismayed by this sudden move, but did not intend to show it. "Isn't this
+rather ... precipitous? We're all going in a few days. Why can't he
+wait?"
+
+Her chaperone looked at Joyce as she answered. "Urgent business, he
+says."
+
+"Urgent fiddlesticks!" Joyce stifled a manufactured yawn. "I dare say we
+bore him as much as he does us. Wish we were all back in grimy old
+London."
+
+"It won't be long now." Lady Jim answered with a smile at the other
+suggestion. "No, I don't think business calls him, and I don't think he
+is bored."
+
+Joyce understood the significance of the retort. Verinder at last had
+revolted against being played with fast and loose. He was going because
+of her violent flirtation with Jack Kilmeny. This was his declaration of
+independence.
+
+Miss Seldon was alarmed. She had not for a minute intended to let the
+millionaire escape. The very possibility of it frightened her. It had
+not occurred to her that the little man had spirit enough to resent her
+course so effectively. With the prospect of losing it in sight, his
+great wealth loomed up to dwarf the desire of the hour. She blamed
+herself because in the excitement of her affair with Kilmeny she had for
+the first time in her life let herself forget real values.
+
+But Joyce was too cool a hand to waste time in repining so long as there
+was a chance to repair the damage. Was the lost prize beyond recovery?
+Two points were in her favor. Verinder had not yet gone, and he was very
+much infatuated with her. No doubt his vanity was in arms. He would be
+shy of any advances. His intention was to beat a retreat in sulky
+dignity, and he would not respond to any of the signals which in the
+past had always brought him to heel. It all rested on the fortuity of
+her getting five minutes alone with him. Granted this, she would have a
+chance. There are ways given to women whereby men of his type can be
+placated. She would have to flatter him by abasing herself, by throwing
+herself upon his mercy. But since this must be done, she was prepared to
+pay the price.
+
+It appeared that Dobyans Verinder did not intend to give her an
+opportunity. From the soup to the walnuts the topic of conversation had
+to do with the impending departure of the mine owner. Joyce was prepared
+to be very kind to him, but he did not for an instant let his eyes dwell
+in hers. Behind the curtain of her dark silken lashes she was alertly
+conscious of the man without appearing to be so. He meant to snub her,
+to leave without seeing her alone. That was to be her punishment for
+having cut too deep into his self-esteem. He was going to jilt her.
+
+During dinner and during that subsequent half hour while the ladies
+waited for the men to rejoin them, Joyce was in a tremor of anxiety. But
+she carried herself with an indifference that was superb. She had taken
+a chair at the far end of the long parlor close to a French window
+opening upon a porch. Apparently she was idly interested in a new novel,
+but never had she been more watchful. If she had a chance to play her
+hand she would win; if the luck broke against her she would lose.
+
+Most of her friends had mothers to maneuver for them. Joyce had none,
+but she was not one to let that stand in her way. Already she had made
+her first move by asking Lord Farquhar in a whisper not to linger long
+over the cigars. He had nodded silently, and she knew he would keep his
+word. If Jack would only stay away until she could see Verinder....
+
+She called the mine owner to her the instant that the men reappeared. He
+looked across the room sullenly and appeared for one dubious moment to
+hesitate. But before he could frame an excuse she had spoken again.
+
+"I want you to see this ridiculous illustration. It is the most
+amusing...."
+
+Without any hesitation she had summoned him before them all. He could
+not rudely refuse her the ordinary civilities that pass current in
+society. Sulkily he moved to her side.
+
+She held up the book to him. No illustration met the eyes of the
+surprised man. Joyce was pointing to a sentence in the story heavily
+underscored by a pencil.
+
+"_Why are you so cruel to me?_"
+
+His chin dropped with amazement. Then slowly an angry flush rose to his
+face. His jaw set firmly as he looked at her.
+
+"Yes, it's certainly ridiculous ... and amusing," he said aloud.
+
+"There's another, too," she went on quickly, recovering the book.
+
+Her fingers turned a page or two swiftly. On the margin was a penciled
+note.
+
+"I must see you alone, Dobyans. I must."
+
+She lifted to him a face flushed and eager, from which wounded eyes
+filmy with tears appealed to him. Her shyness, her diffidence, the
+childlike call upon his chivalry were wholly charming. She was a
+distractingly pretty woman, and she had thrown herself upon his mercy.
+Verinder began insensibly to soften, but he would not give up his
+grievance.
+
+"It's amusing, too--and unnecessary, I think," he said.
+
+The long lashes fluttered tremulously to her cheeks. It seemed to him
+that she was on the verge of unconsciousness, that the pent emotion was
+going to prove too much for her.
+
+"I--I think the story calls for it," she answered, a little brokenly.
+
+He retorted, still carrying on the conversation that was to mean one
+thing to the others in case they heard and another to them. "Depends on
+the point of view, I suppose. The story is plain enough--doesn't need
+any more to carry its meaning."
+
+He was standing between her and the rest of the party. Joyce laid an
+appealing hand on his coat sleeve. Tears brimmed over from the soft
+eyes. She bit her lip and turned her head away. If ever a woman
+confessed love without words Joyce was doing it now. Verinder's
+inflammable heart began to quicken.
+
+"Where?" he asked grudgingly, lowering his voice.
+
+A glow of triumphant relief swept through her. She had won. But the very
+nearness of her defeat tempered pride to an emotion still related to
+gratitude. The warm eyes that met his were alive with thanks. She moved
+her head slightly toward the window.
+
+In another moment they stood outside, alone in the darkness. The night
+was chill and she shivered at the change from the warm room. Verinder
+stepped back into the parlor, stripped from the piano the small Navajo
+rug that draped it, and rejoined Joyce on the porch. He wrapped it about
+her shoulders.
+
+She nodded thanks and led him to the end of the porch. For a few moments
+she leaned on the railing and watched the street lights. Then, abruptly,
+she shot her question at him.
+
+"Why are you going away?"
+
+Stiff as a poker, he made answer. "Business in London, Miss Seldon.
+Sorry to leave and all that, but----"
+
+She cut him off sharply. "I want the truth. What have I done that you
+should ... treat me so?"
+
+Anger stirred in him again. "Did I say you had done anything?"
+
+"But you think I'm to blame. You know you do."
+
+"Do I?" His vanity and suspicion made him wary, though he knew she was
+trying to win him back. He told himself that he had been made a fool of
+long enough.
+
+"Yes, you do ... and it's all your fault." She broke down and turned
+half from him. Deep sobs began to rack her body.
+
+"I'd like to know how it's my fault," he demanded resentfully. "Am I to
+blame because you broke your engagement to walk with me and went with
+that thief Kilmeny?"
+
+"Yes." The word fell from her lips so low that he almost doubted his
+ears.
+
+"What? By Jove, that's rich!"
+
+Her luminous eyes fell full into his, then dropped. "If ... if you can't
+see----"
+
+"See what? I see you threw me overboard for him. I see you've been
+flirting a mile a minute with the beggar and playing fast and loose with
+me. I'm hanged if I stand it."
+
+"Oh, Dobyans! Don't you see? I ... I ... You made me."
+
+"Made you?"
+
+She was standing in profile toward him. He could see the quiver of her
+lip and the shadows beneath her eyes. Already he felt the lift of the
+big wave that was to float him to success.
+
+"I ... have no mother."
+
+"Don't take the point."
+
+She spoke as a troubled child, as if to the breezes of the night. "I
+have to be careful. You know how people talk. Could I let them say that
+I ... ran after you?" The last words were almost in a whisper.
+
+"Do you mean...?"
+
+"Oh, couldn't you see? How blind men are!"
+
+The little man, moved to his soul because this proud beauty was so
+deeply in love with him, took her in his arms and kissed her.
+
+A little shudder went through her blood. It had not been two hours since
+Jack Kilmeny's kisses had sent a song electrically into her veins. But
+she trod down the momentary nausea with the resolute will that had
+always been hers. Verinder had paid for the right to caress her. He had
+offered his millions for the privilege. She too must pay the price for
+what she received.
+
+"We must go in," she told him presently. "They will wonder."
+
+"They won't wonder long, by Jove," he replied, a surge of triumph in his
+voice.
+
+Joyce looked at him quickly. "You're not going to tell them to-night?"
+
+He nodded. "To-night, my beauty."
+
+"Oh, no. Please not to-night. Let's ... keep it to ourselves for a few
+days, dear." The last word was a trifle belated, but that might be
+because she was not used to it.
+
+Verinder shot a look of quick suspicion at her. "I'm going to tell them
+to-night--as soon as we get back into the room."
+
+"But ... surely it's for me to say that, Dobyans. I want to keep our
+little secret for awhile." She caught with her hands the lapels of his
+dinner jacket and looked pleadingly at him.
+
+"No--to-night." He had a good deal of the obstinacy characteristic of
+many stupid men, but this decision was based on shrewd sense. He held
+the upper hand. So long as they were in the neighborhood of Jack Kilmeny
+he intended to keep it.
+
+"Even though I want to wait?"
+
+"Why do you want to wait?" he demanded sullenly. "Because of that fellow
+Kilmeny?"
+
+She knew that she had gone as far as she dared. "How absurd. Of course
+not. Tell them if you like, but--it's the first favor I've asked of you
+since----"
+
+Her voice faltered and broke. It held a note of exquisite pathos.
+Verinder felt like a brute, but he did not intend to give way.
+
+"You haven't any real reason, Joyce."
+
+"Isn't it a reason that ... I want to keep our engagement just to
+ourselves for a few days? It's our secret--yours and mine--and I don't
+want everybody staring at us just yet, Dobyans. Don't you understand?"
+
+"Different here," he answered jauntily. "I want to shout it from the
+house-top." He interrupted himself to caress her again and to kiss the
+little pink ear that alone was within reach. "I'll make it up to you a
+hundred times, but I'm jolly well set on telling them to-night, dear."
+
+She gave up with a shrug, not because she wanted to yield but because
+she must. Her face was turned away from him, so that he did not see the
+steely look in her eyes and the hard set of the mouth. She was thinking
+of Jack Kilmeny. What would he say or do when he was told? Surely he
+would protect her. He would not give her away. If he were a gentleman,
+he couldn't betray a woman. But how far would the code of her world
+govern him? He was primeval man. Would the savagery in him break bounds?
+
+Within five minutes she found out. Jack Kilmeny, in evening dress, was
+jesting in animated talk with India when the engaged couple reentered
+the room. He turned, the smile still on his face, to greet Joyce as she
+came forward beside Verinder. The little man was strutting pompously
+toward Lady Farquhar, the arm of the young woman tucked under his.
+
+The eyes of Joyce went straight to Kilmeny in appeal for charity. In
+them he read both fear and shame, as well as a hint of defiant
+justification.
+
+Even before the mine owner spoke everybody in the room knew what had
+happened on the veranda.
+
+"Congratulate me, Lady Farquhar. Miss Seldon has promised to be my
+wife," Verinder sang out chirpily.
+
+There was a chorus of ejaculations, of excited voices. Joyce disappeared
+into the arms of her friends, while Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny shook
+hands with the beaming millionaire and congratulated him. Jack's hands
+were filled with sheet music, but he nodded across to his successful
+rival.
+
+"You're a lucky man to have won so true a heart, Mr. Verinder," he said
+composedly.
+
+Joyce heard the words and caught the hidden irony. Her heart was in her
+throat. Did he mean to tell more?
+
+Presently it came his turn to wish her joy. Jack looked straight at her.
+There was a hard smile on his sardonic face.
+
+"I believe the right man has won you, Miss Seldon. All marriages aren't
+made in Heaven, but---- I've been hoping Mr. Verinder would lose out
+because he wasn't good enough for you. But I've changed my mind. He's
+just the man for you. Hope you'll always love him as much as you do
+now."
+
+Joyce felt the color beat into her cheeks. She knew now that Kilmeny was
+not going to betray her, but she knew too that he understood and
+despised her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WARNING
+
+
+Joyce, a lover of luxury, usually had a roll and coffee in bed as a
+substitute for breakfast. Sometimes she varied this by appearing late at
+the table and putting the attendants to unnecessary trouble. This she
+always paid for with murmurs of apology and sweet smiles of thanks.
+
+On the second morning after the announcement of her engagement to
+Dobyans Verinder she came down to find the dining-room empty except for
+the omnibus.
+
+She opened wide eyes of surprise. "Dear me! Am I late?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+She glanced at the watch on her wrist. "How inconsiderate of me! I
+didn't realize the time. Would you mind calling a waiter?"
+
+Meanwhile Joyce began on her grape fruit. Almost simultaneously a sound
+of voices reached her. Men were coming into the parlor that adjoined the
+breakfast room.
+
+The high-pitched voice of her affianced lover was the first she
+recognized. "----to-night! Sure he said to-night?"
+
+Joyce judged that the rough tones of the answer came from a workingman.
+"That's right. To-night, Bell said. He was to bring his wagon round to
+Kilmeny's at eleven and they were going to haul the ore to Utah
+Junction."
+
+A third speaker, evidently Bleyer, the superintendent, cut in quietly.
+"Bell said it was to be a big shipment, didn't he?"
+
+"Yep. Worth sixty or seventy thousand, he figured."
+
+"Was Bell drunk?"
+
+"I wouldn't say drunk. He had been drinking a good deal. Talkative like.
+He let it out as a secret, y'understand."
+
+"Anyone there beside you?"
+
+"A miner by the name of Peale."
+
+"Know the man?"
+
+It was Verinder that asked the question and Bleyer that answered.
+
+"Yes. A bad lot. One of those that insulted the young ladies."
+
+"Anyhow, he won't warn Kilmeny."
+
+"Not after the mauling that young man gave him. He's still carrying the
+scars," Bleyer replied with a low laugh. He added briskly, after a
+moment, "What do you expect to get out of this, Rollins?"
+
+The workman seemed to answer with some embarrassment. "Thought you might
+give me that lease in the Mollie Gibson I spoke to you about, Mr.
+Bleyer."
+
+"It's yours--if this comes out as you say, my man. I'd give more than
+that to call the turn on Mr. Highgrader Kilmeny," Verinder promised.
+
+"And, o' course, you won't give it away that I told."
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+The arrival of a waiter eliminated Joyce as a listener, for the first
+thing the man did was to close the door between the parlor and the
+dining-room.
+
+But she had heard enough to know that Jack Kilmeny was in danger of
+falling into a trap that was being set for him. Verinder had him at
+last, just as he had promised that he would get him. No doubt they would
+have witnesses and would send him to prison as they had threatened.
+
+No more than forty-eight hours earlier Joyce would have been on
+Kilmeny's side instantly. Now her feelings were mixed. It was still
+impossible for her to think of him without a flare of passion. She was
+jealous and resentful because she had lost him, but deeper than these
+lay the anger born of his scornful surrender of her. It was as if his
+eyes for the first time had seen the real woman stripped of the glamour
+lent by her beauty. His contemptuous withdrawal from the field had cut
+like a knife thrust. She wanted to pay him with usury for his cool, hard
+disdain. And she had the chance. All she had to do was to be silent and
+he would fall a victim to his own folly.
+
+There was a hard glitter in the eyes of the young woman. Perhaps Mr.
+Highgrader Kilmeny, as Verinder had called him, would not be so prodigal
+of contempt for other people when he stood in the criminal dock. He had
+been brutally unkind to her. Was she to blame because he was too poor to
+support her properly? He ought to thank her for having the good sense
+not to tie herself like a millstone about his neck. They could not live
+on love just because for the moment passion had swept them from their
+feet. Instead of being angry at her, he should sympathize with her for
+being the victim of a pressure which had driven her to a disagreeable
+duty.
+
+Her simmering anger received a fillip from an accidental meeting with
+Kilmeny, the first since the night of her engagement. Joyce and Moya
+were coming out of a stationer's when they came face to face with the
+miner.
+
+The eyes of the young man visibly hardened. He shook hands with them
+both and exchanged the usual inane greetings as to the weather. It was
+just as they were parting that he sent his barbed shot into Joyce.
+
+"I mustn't keep you longer, Miss Seldon. One can guess how keen you
+must be to get back to Verinder. Love's young dream, and that sort of
+thing, eh?"
+
+The jeer that ran through his masked insolence brought the angry color
+to the cheeks of Joyce. She bit her lip to keep back tears of vexation,
+but it was not until she was in her room with Moya that the need for a
+confidant overflowed into speech.
+
+"Did you ever hear anything so hateful? He made love to me on the
+hill.... I let him.... He knows I ... am fond of him. I told him that I
+loved him. And now...."
+
+Moya stared at her in amaze. "Do you mean that you let Mr. Kilmeny make
+love to you an hour or two before you became engaged to Mr. Verinder?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, don't be a prude, Moya," Joyce snapped irritably. "I
+told you I was fond of him, didn't I? How could I help his kissing
+me ... or help liking to have him? He ought to be glad. Instead, he
+insults me." Miss Seldon's self-pity reached the acute stage of sobs.
+"I was in love with him. Why is he so hard?"
+
+"Perhaps he thinks that since he is in love with you and you with him
+that gives him some claim," Moya suggested dryly.
+
+"Of course that's what he thinks. But it's absurd. I'm not going to
+marry Dobyans Verinder because I want to. He knows that as well as you
+do. Why does he blame me, then? Goodness knows, it's hard enough to
+marry the man without having my friends misunderstand."
+
+Moya asked an unnecessary question. "Why do you marry him, then?"
+
+"You know perfectly well," flashed Joyce petulantly. "I'm taking him
+because I must."
+
+"Like a bad-tasting dose of medicine?"
+
+Her friend nodded. "I _can't_ let him go. I just _can't_. Jack Kilmeny
+ought to see that."
+
+"Oh, he sees it, but you can't blame him for being bitter."
+
+At the recollection of his impudence anger flared up in Joyce.
+
+"Let him be as bitter as he pleases, then. I happen to know something he
+would give a good deal to learn. Mr. Jack Kilmeny is going to get into
+trouble this very night. They've laid a plot----"
+
+She stopped, warned by the tense stillness of Moya.
+
+"Yes?" asked the Irish girl.
+
+"Oh, well! It doesn't matter."
+
+"Who has laid a plot?"
+
+"I've no business to tell. I just happened to overhear something."
+
+"What did you overhear?"
+
+"Nothing much."
+
+"I want to know just what you heard."
+
+Against the quiet steadfast determination of this girl Joyce had no
+chance. A spirit that did not know defeat inhabited the slender body.
+
+Bit by bit Moya forced out of her the snatch of conversation she had
+overheard while at breakfast.
+
+"It's a secret. You're not to tell anyone," Joyce protested.
+
+Her friend drummed on the arm of the chair with the tips of her fingers.
+She was greatly troubled at what she had learned. She was a young woman,
+singularly stanch to her friends, and certainly she owed something to
+Verinder. The whole party were his guests at Goldbanks. He had brought
+them in a private car and taken care of them munificently. There were
+times when Moya disliked him a good deal, but that would not justify an
+act of treachery. If she warned Jack Kilmeny--and Moya did not pretend
+to herself for an instant that she was not going to do this--she would
+have to make confession to Verinder later. This would be humiliating,
+doubly so because she knew the man believed she was in love with the
+Goldbanks miner.
+
+In her heart the Irish girl did not doubt that Jack was guilty, but this
+would not prevent her from saving him if she could. There came to her a
+swift vision of two helpless girls in a cabin with drinking ruffians, of
+the entry of a man into the picture, of his fight against odds to save
+her and Joyce from insult. Beside this abstract justice became a pale
+and misty virtue.
+
+"Of course you'll not tell anyone," Joyce repeated.
+
+Moya brought her gaze back from the window. "I shall tell Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+"But it isn't your secret. You have no right to."
+
+"Have you forgotten that night in the cabin?" asked Moya in a low, clear
+voice. "If you have, I haven't."
+
+"I don't care," Joyce answered petulantly. "He's so hard. Why can't he
+be nice about this? Why can't he understand--instead of sneering at me?
+It's a good deal harder for me than for him. Think of fifty years of
+Dobyans Verinder."
+
+"Would you care to write Mr. Kilmeny a note? I'll take it to him if you
+like," Moya suggested gently.
+
+Joyce considered. "No, I couldn't put it on paper. But--you might tell
+him."
+
+"I don't think I could quite do that."
+
+"If it came up right; just show him how I'm placed."
+
+"Perhaps. Shall I tell him that you asked me to warn him?"
+
+Joyce nodded, eyes shining. She was a young woman capable of changing
+her mind in the snap of a finger. Dainty and exquisite as apple
+blossoms, she was like a young plant with delicate tendrils forever
+reaching out. Love she must have and ever more of it. To admiration she
+was sensitive in every fiber. Whenever she thought of Jack Kilmeny's
+contempt tears scorched her eyes.
+
+It was like Moya that she carried her warning immediately and directly.
+Kilmeny was not easy to find. He had been seen entering the office of a
+lawyer, but had left before she arrived. The attorney understood Jack to
+say that he was going to an assayer's office, and the young woman
+learned there that he had not been seen yet by the assayer. From here
+she walked toward his boarding house, thinking that she might catch him
+at lunch.
+
+A quick step on the boardwalk behind her caught the girl's attention.
+Almost at the same moment a voice hailed her.
+
+"Whither away, Miss Dwight?"
+
+She turned, heart beating fast. "I was looking for you, Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+"And you've found me. What luck--for Jack Kilmeny!" His friendly
+smile--the same one that had claimed comradeship on the Gunnison--beamed
+upon her with its hint of irony.
+
+A miner with a dinner bucket was coming toward them. Moya spoke quickly.
+
+"I want to see you ... alone. I've something important to tell you."
+
+His cool eyes searched her face alertly. "Come up with me to the old
+Pandora dump."
+
+They took a side street that ran up the hill, presently came to the end
+of it, and stopped at the foot of a trail leading to the abandoned
+shaft-house.
+
+The girl fired her news at him point blank. "Mr. Verinder has found out
+what you mean to do to-night and you are to be trapped."
+
+"What I mean to do?" he repeated.
+
+"About the ore--shipping it or something. I don't know exactly--somebody
+was drinking and talked, I think."
+
+Moya, watching Kilmeny's face, saw only the slightest change. The eyes
+seemed to harden and narrow the least in the world.
+
+"Tell me all you know about it."
+
+She repeated what Joyce had overheard, adding that her friend had asked
+her to tell him.
+
+The faintest ironic smile touched his face. "Will you thank Miss Seldon
+for me, both for this and many other favors?"
+
+"You don't understand Joyce. You're not fair to her," Moya said
+impulsively.
+
+"Perhaps not." A sudden warmth kindled in his eyes. "But I know who my
+real friends are. I'm fair to them, neighbor."
+
+The color beat into her face, but she continued loyally. "May
+I ... assume you have a kindly interest in Joyce?"
+
+"I'll listen to anything you care to tell me. I owe my friend, Miss
+Dwight, that much."
+
+"She told me ... a little about you and her. Be fair to her. Remember
+how she has been brought up. All her life it has been drilled into her
+that she must make a good match. It's a shameful thing. I hate it.
+But ... what can a girl like Joyce do?"
+
+"You justify her?"
+
+"I understand her. A decision was forced on her. She had no time to
+choose. And--if you'll forgive my saying so--I think Joyce did wisely,
+since she is what she is."
+
+"Of course she did," he answered bitterly.
+
+"Think of her. She doesn't love him, but she sacrifices her feeling to
+what she considers her duty."
+
+"Shall we substitute ambition for duty?"
+
+"If you like. Her position is not a happy one, but she must smile and be
+gay and hide her heartache. You can afford to be generous, Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+"I've been a fool," he admitted dryly. "The turn that things have taken
+is the best possible one for me. But I'm not quite prepared to thank
+Miss Seldon yet for having awakened me."
+
+She saw that his vanity was stung more than his heart. His infatuation
+for her had been of the senses. The young woman shifted to another
+issue.
+
+"You'll be careful to-night, won't you?"
+
+"Very. Mr. Verinder will have to wait for his coup, thanks to you."
+
+"You mean...?" The question hung fire on her lips.
+
+"Go on, neighbor."
+
+"No. It was something I had no business to ask." The cheeks beneath the
+dusky eyes held each a patch of color burning through the tan.
+
+"Then I'll say it for you. You were going to ask if they would really
+have caught me with the goods. Wasn't that it?"
+
+She nodded, looking straight at him with the poise of lithe, slim youth
+he knew so well. Her very breathing seemed for the moment suspended
+while she waited, tremulous lips apart, for his answer.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You mean that ... you are a highgrader?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I ... was afraid so."
+
+His eyes would not release her. "You made excuses for Miss Seldon. Can
+you find any for me?"
+
+"You are a man. You are strong. It is different with you."
+
+"My sin is beyond the pale, I suppose?"
+
+"How do I know? I'm only a girl. I've never seen anything of real life.
+Can I judge you?"
+
+"But you do."
+
+The troubled virginal sweetness of the girl went to his soul. She was
+his friend, and her heart ached because of his wrongdoing.
+
+"I can't make myself think wrong is right."
+
+"You think the profits from these mines should all go to Verinder and
+his friends, that none should belong to the men who do the work?"
+
+"I don't know.... That doesn't seem fair.... But I'm not wise enough to
+know how to make that right. The law is the law. I can't go back of
+that."
+
+"Can't you? I can. Who makes the laws?" He asked it almost harshly.
+
+"The people, I suppose."
+
+"Nothing of the kind. The operators control the legislatures and put
+through whatever bills they please. I went to the legislative assembly
+once and we forced through an eight hour law for underground workers.
+The state Supreme Court, puppets of capital, declared the statute
+unconstitutional. The whole machinery of government is owned by our
+masters. What can we do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Neither do I--except what I am doing. It is against the law, all right,
+but I try to see that the workmen get some of the profits they earn."
+
+"Would the operators--what would they do if they proved you guilty of
+highgrading?"
+
+"It is hard to prove. Ore can't easily be identified."
+
+"But if they did?" she persisted.
+
+"I'd go over the road quick as their courts could send me." A sardonic
+flicker of amusement moved him to add: "Would you obey the Scriptural
+injunction and visit me in prison, Miss Dwight?"
+
+"I wouldn't be here. We're going back to England next week."
+
+"But if you were. Would your friendship stand the test?"
+
+Once again she answered, "I don't know," her heart beating wildly as her
+glance fell away from his.
+
+"I shan't have to try you out this time, neighbor. I'm not going to the
+pen if I can help it."
+
+"Are you sure of that? The mine owners are quite determined to punish
+some of the highgraders. Suppose I hadn't come to you to-day. What
+then?"
+
+He smiled down upon her with the easy recklessness that distinguished
+him. "I don't think it would have run quite to a prison sentence. The
+burden of proof lies on the accuser. Because I am in possession of rich
+ore, it does not follow that I did not come by it legitimately. Ore
+can't be sworn to like bric-a-brac. I may have shipped this in from
+South Africa, so far as the law knows. Bleyer knows that. I figure he
+would have played his hand in the Goldbanks way."
+
+"And how would that be?"
+
+"He would forget the law too, just as we've done on our side. A posse
+of men would have fallen on me maybe after I had got out of town, and
+they would have taken that ore from me. They would have been masked so
+that I could not swear to them."
+
+"Why, that is highway robbery."
+
+He laughed. "We don't use such big words out here, ma'am. Just a
+hold-up--a perfectly legitimate one, from Bleyer's viewpoint--and it
+would have left me broke."
+
+"Broke!"
+
+He nodded. "Dead broke. I've got twenty thousand dollars invested in
+that ore--every cent I've got in the world."
+
+"You paid that to the miners for it?"
+
+"We pay fifty per cent. of what is coming to the men as soon as a rough
+assay is made, the other fifty after we get the smelter returns. That
+wagon load of ore is worth--unless I miss my guess badly--about sixty
+thousand dollars."
+
+"Dear me. So much as that?" She could not quite keep a note of sarcasm
+out of her voice. "And have you it in a safety deposit vault?"
+
+His cool gaze took her in quietly. He was willing to bet his last dollar
+on her loyalty, and it was like him to back his judgment in one wild
+throw. "Not exactly. It is lying in a pile of hay in my barn, all sacked
+up ready for shipment."
+
+"Waiting there for anybody that wants it," she suggested.
+
+"For anybody that wants it worse than I do," he corrected, the fighting
+gleam in his eyes.
+
+"I've a right to ask one thing of you--that there will be no bloodshed
+to-night because of what I have told you."
+
+"There will be none of my seeking," he replied grimly.
+
+"No. That's not enough. You must find a way to avoid it."
+
+"By handing over my hard-earned dishonest profits to the virtuous
+Verinder?" he asked dryly.
+
+"I don't care how. But I won't have on my shoulders ... murder."
+
+"That's a right hard word, neighbor," he said, falling again into the
+Western drawl he sometimes used as a mark of his friendship for her.
+"But have it your own way. I'll not even tote a gat."
+
+"Thank you." She gave him a brisk little nod, suddenly choked up in her
+throat, and turned to go.
+
+Jack fell into step beside her. "Have I lost my little friend--the one
+who used to come to me in my dreams and whisper with a lisp that I
+wasn't a 'stwanger'?" he asked, very gently.
+
+She swallowed twice and walked on without looking at him. But every
+nerve of her was conscious of his stimulating presence. Since the inner
+man found expression in that lithe body with the undulating flow of
+well-packed muscles, in the spare head set so finely on the perfect
+shoulders, in the steady eyes so frank and self-reliant, surely he was
+not unworthy the friendship of any woman. But he had just confessed
+himself a thief. What right had he to ask or she to give so much?
+
+Her hand went out in an impetuous little gesture of despair. "How do I
+know? You are doing wrong, but ... Oh, why do you do such things?"
+
+"It's in my blood not to let prudence stop me when I've made up my mind
+to a thing. My father was that way. I'm trying in a rough way to right
+an injustice--and I like the excitement--and I daresay I like the loot
+too," he finished with a reckless laugh.
+
+"I wish I could show you how wrong you are," she cried in a low voice.
+
+"You can't. I'll go my own way. But you are still going to let me come
+and visit you in your dreams, aren't you?"
+
+The glow in her quick live eyes was not a reflection of the sun. She
+felt the color flood her cheeks in waves. She dared not look at him, but
+she was poignantly aware that his gaze was fixed on her, that it seemed
+to bore to the soul and read the hidden secret there. A queer
+lightheadedness affected her. It was as if her body might float away
+into space. She loved him. Whatever he was, the man held her heart in
+the hollow of his careless, reckless hand. To him she would always deny
+it--or would have if he had thought enough of her to ask--but she knew
+the truth about herself from many a passionate hour of despair.
+
+Dry as a whisper came her answer, in a voice which lacked the
+nonchalance she tried to give it. "I daresay I'll be as friendly ... as
+you deserve."
+
+"You've got to be a heap more friendly than that, partner."
+
+They had come back to the boardwalk which marked the parting of the ways
+for them. She had won control of herself again and offered him a steady
+hand.
+
+"I suppose we'll not see each other again.... Good-by."
+
+He was suddenly conscious that he desired very greatly her regard and
+her approval.
+
+"Is that all you have to say? Are you going to leave me like this?"
+
+"What more is there to be said?" She asked it quietly, with the calm
+courage that had its birth in hopelessness.
+
+"This much, at least. I don't release you from ... the old tie that used
+to bind us. We're still going to be dream friends. I haven't forgotten
+little Moya, who kissed me one night on the deck of the _Victorian_."
+
+"She was a baby at the time," answered the girl.
+
+He had not released her hand. Now, as he looked straight into the sweet
+face with eyes like troubled stars, it came to him on a flood of light
+that he had made a fatal mistake.
+
+He dropped her fingers abruptly. "Good-by."
+
+His crisp footfalls seemed to print themselves on a heart of lead. How
+could she know that he carried away with him a vision of sweet youth
+that was to endure!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+TWO AMBUSHES
+
+
+The clock at the new Verinder Building showed ten minutes past eleven as
+Jack Kilmeny took the Utah Junction road out of Goldbanks with his
+loaded ore wagon. It was a night of scudding clouds, through which
+gleamed occasionally a fugitive moon. The mountain road was steep and
+narrow, but both the driver and the mules were used to its every turn
+and curve. In early days the highgrader had driven a stage along it many
+a night when he could not have seen the ears of the bronchos.
+
+His destination was the Jack Pot, a mine three miles from town, where
+intermittently for months he had been raising worthless rock in the hope
+of striking the extension of the Mollie Gibson vein. It was not quite
+true, as Bleyer had intimated, that his lease was merely a blind to
+cover ore thefts, though undoubtedly he used it for that purpose
+incidentally.
+
+Bleyer had guessed shrewdly that Kilmeny would drive out to the Jack
+Pot, put up in the deserted bunk-house till morning, and then haul the
+ore down to the junction to ship to the smelter on the presumption that
+it had been taken from the leased property. This was exactly what Jack
+had intended to do. Apparently his purpose was unchanged. He wound
+steadily up the hill trail, keeping the animals at a steady pull, except
+for breathing spells. The miner had been a mule skinner in his time,
+just as he had tried his hand at a dozen other occupations. In the still
+night the crack of his whip sounded clear as a shot when it hissed above
+the flanks of the leaders without touching them.
+
+He ran into the expected ambush a half mile from the mine, at a point
+where the road dipped down a wooded slope to a sandy wash.
+
+"Hands up!" ordered a sharp voice.
+
+A horseman loomed up in the darkness beside the wagon. A second appeared
+from the brush. Other figures emerged dimly from the void.
+
+Jack gave his mules the whip and the heavy wagon plowed into the deep
+sand. Before the wheels had made two revolutions the leaders were
+stopped. Other men swarmed up the side of the wagon, dragged the driver
+from his seat, and flung him to the ground.
+
+Even though his face was buried in the sand and two men were spread over
+his body, the captive was enjoying himself.
+
+"This is no way to treat a man's anatomy--most unladylike conduct I ever
+saw," he protested.
+
+He was sharply advised to shut up.
+
+After the pressure on his neck was a little relieved, Jack twisted round
+enough to see that his captors were all masked.
+
+"What is this game, boys--a hold-up?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. A hold-up of a hold-up," answered one.
+
+Three of the men busied themselves moving the ore sacks from his wagon
+to another that had been driven out of the brush. A fourth, whom he
+judged to be Bleyer, was directing operations, while the fifth menaced
+him with a revolver shoved against the small of his back.
+
+The situation would have been a serious one--if it had not happened to
+be amusing instead. Kilmeny wanted to laugh at the bustling energy of
+the men, but restrained himself out of respect for what was expected of
+him.
+
+"I'll have the law on you fellows," he threatened, living up to the
+situation. "You'd look fine behind the bars, Bleyer."
+
+"All those sacks transferred yet, Tim?" barked the superintendent.
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Good. Hit the trail."
+
+The wagon passed out of the draw toward Goldbanks. For some minutes the
+sound of the wheels grinding against the disintegrated granite of the
+roadbed came back to Jack and the two guards who remained with him.
+
+"Hope this will be a lesson to you," said the superintendent presently.
+"Better take warning. Next time you'll go to the pen sure."
+
+"Wait till I get you into court, Bleyer."
+
+"What'll you do there?" jeered the other man. "You'd have a heluvatime
+swearing to him and making it stick. You're sewed up tight this time,
+Jack."
+
+"Am I? Bet you a new hat that by this time to-morrow night you fellows
+won't be cracking your lips laughing."
+
+"Take you. Just order the hat left at Goldstein's for the man who calls
+for it."
+
+For an hour by the superintendent's watch Kilmeny was held under guard.
+Then, after warning the highgrader not to return to town before
+daybreak, the two men mounted and rode swiftly away. Jack was alone with
+his mules and his empty wagon.
+
+He restrained himself no longer. Mirth pealed in rich laughter from his
+throat, doubled him up, shook him until he had to hang on to a wagon
+wheel for support. At last he wiped tears from his eyes, climbed into
+the wagon, and continued on the way to the Jack Pot. At intervals his
+whoop of gayety rang out boyishly on the night breeze. Again he whistled
+cheerfully. He was in the best of humor with himself and the world. For
+he had played a pretty good joke on Bleyer and Verinder, one they would
+appreciate at its full within a day or two. He would have given a good
+deal to be present when they made a certain discovery. Would Moya smile
+when Verinder told her how the tables had been turned? Or would she
+think it merely another instance of his depravity?
+
+The road wound up and down over scarred hillsides and through gorges
+which cut into the range like sword clefts. From one of these it crept
+up a stiff slope toward the Jack Pot. One hundred and fifty yards from
+the mine Jack drew up to give the mules a rest.
+
+His lips framed themselves to whistle the first bars of a popular song,
+but the sound died stillborn. Sharply through the clear night air rang a
+rifle shot.
+
+Jack did not hear it. A bolt of jagged lightning seared through his
+brain. The limp hands of the driver fell away from the reins and he fell
+to the ground, crumpling as a dry leaf that is crushed in the palm.
+
+From the shadow of the bunk-house two men stole into the moonlight
+heavily like awkward beasts of prey. They crept stealthily forward,
+rifles in hand, never once lifting their eyes from the huddled mass
+beside the wagon.
+
+The first looked stolidly down upon the white face and kicked the body
+with his heavy boot.
+
+"By Goad, Dave, us be quits wi' Jack Kilmeny."
+
+The other--it was Peale, the Cornish miner--had stepped on a spoke of
+the wheel and pulled himself up so that he could look down into the bed
+of the wagon. Now he broke out with an oath.
+
+"The wagon's empty."
+
+"What!" Trefoyle straightened instantly, then ran to see for himself.
+For a moment he could not speak for the rage that surged up in him. "The
+dommed robber has made fool of us'n," he cried savagely.
+
+In their fury they were like barbarians, cursing impotently the man
+lying with a white face shining in the moonlight. They had expected to
+pay a debt of vengeance and to win a fortune at the same stroke. The
+latter they had missed. The disappointment of their loss stripped them
+to stark primeval savagery. It was some time before they could exult in
+their revenge.
+
+"He'll interfere wi' us no more--not this side o' hell anyway," Peale
+cried.
+
+"Not he. An' we'll put him in a fine grave where he'll lie safe."
+
+They threw the body into the wagon and climbed to the seat. Peale drove
+along an unused road that deflected from the one running to the Jack
+Pot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MR. VERINDER IS TREATED TO A SURPRISE
+
+
+The morning after the seizing of the ore Verinder came to breakfast in a
+mood so jubilant that he could not long keep to himself the cause of his
+exultation. Kilmeny and Farquhar were away on a hunting trip, and none
+of the ladies except Moya was yet up. He was especially eager to tell
+his news to her, because she had always been such an open defender of
+the highgrader. She gave him his opening very promptly, for she was
+anxious to know what had occurred.
+
+"Has some distant connection passed away and left you a fortune, Mr.
+Verinder? Or have you merely found a new gold mine since I saw you
+last?" she asked.
+
+"By Jove, you're a good guesser, Miss Dwight. I found a gold mine last
+night. Wonder if you could think where."
+
+Her heart beat faster. "You're so pleased about it I fancy the quartz
+must have been sacked up for you ready for the smelter," she said
+carelessly.
+
+Verinder flashed a quick look at her. "Eh, what? How's that?"
+
+Moya opened her lips to confess what she had done, but the arrival of a
+waiter delayed this. Before he had left, Lady Farquhar entered and the
+girl's chance was temporarily gone.
+
+"I was just telling Miss Dwight that we've found another gold mine, Lady
+Farquhar--and of all places in the world located in the bed of a wagon."
+
+"In the bed of a wagon! How could that be?"
+
+"Fact, 'pon my word! High-grade ore too, we fancy; but we'll know more
+about that when we hear from the assayer."
+
+The matron intercepted the look of triumph--it was almost a jeer--that
+the mine owner flung toward Miss Dwight. She did not understand what he
+was talking about, but she saw that Moya did.
+
+"If you'd tell us just what happened we'd be able to congratulate you
+more intelligently," the latter suggested, masking her anxiety.
+
+"Jove, I wish I could--like to tell you the whole story. We pulled off a
+ripping surprise on one of your friends. But--the deuce of it is I'm
+sworn to secrecy. We played the highgraders' game and stepped a bit
+outside the law for once. Let it go at this, that the fellow had to
+swallow a big dose of his own medicine."
+
+Moya pushed one more question home. "Nobody hurt, I suppose?"
+
+"Only his feelings and his pocketbook. But I fancy one highgrader has
+learned that Dobyans Verinder knows his way about a bit, you know."
+
+The subject filled Moya's thoughts all day. Had Kilmeny after all failed
+to take advantage of her warning? Or had his opponents proved too shrewd
+for him? From what Verinder had told her she surmised that Jack had
+tried to reach the railroad with his ore and been intercepted. But why
+had he not changed his plans after her talk with him? Surely he was not
+the kind of man to walk like a lamb into a trap baited for him.
+
+Late in the afternoon Moya, dressed in riding costume, was waiting on
+the hotel porch for India and her brother when she saw Verinder coming
+down the street. That he was in a sulky ill humor was apparent.
+
+"Lord Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny came back a couple of hours ago," she
+said by way of engaging him in talk.
+
+"Any luck?" he asked morosely and with obvious indifference.
+
+"A deer apiece and a bear for the captain."
+
+"That fellow Kilmeny outwitted us, after all," he broke out abruptly.
+"We've been had, by Jove! Must have been what Bleyer calls a plant."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"The rock we took from him was refuse stuff--not worth a dollar."
+
+The girl's eyes gleamed. "Your gold mine was salted, then."
+
+"Not even salted. He had gathered the stuff from some old dump."
+
+"He must have profited by my warning, after all," Moya said quietly.
+
+The little man's eyes narrowed. "Eh? How's that? Did you say your
+warning?"
+
+In spite of herself she felt a sense of error at having played the
+traitor to her host. "Sorry. I didn't like to do it, but----"
+
+"What is it you did?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"I told Mr. Kilmeny that his plan was discovered."
+
+"You--told him." He subdued his anger for the moment. "If it isn't
+asking too much--how did you know anything about it?"
+
+She felt herself flushing with shame, but she answered lightly enough.
+"You shouldn't discuss secrets so near the breakfast-room, Mr.
+Verinder."
+
+"I see. You listened ... and then you ran to your friend, the
+highgrader, with the news. That was good of you, Miss Dwight. I
+appreciate it--under the circumstances."
+
+She knew he referred to the fact that she was his guest. To hear him put
+into words his interpretation of the thing she had done, with
+implications of voice and manner that were hateful, moved her to a
+disgust that included both him and herself.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Verinder--for all the kind things you mean and can't
+say."
+
+She turned on her heel and walked to the end of the veranda. After a
+moment's thought he followed her.
+
+"Have I said a word too much, Miss Dwight? You did listen to a private
+conversation you weren't meant to hear, didn't you? And you ran to your
+friend with it? If I'm wrong, please correct me."
+
+"I daresay you're right. We'll let it go at that, if you please."
+
+Verinder was irritated. Clearly in the right, he had allowed her to put
+him in the wrong.
+
+"I'll withdraw listened, Miss Dwight. Shall we substitute overheard?"
+
+Her angry eyes flashed into his cold, hard ones. "What would you expect
+me to do? You know what he did for Joyce and me. And he is Captain
+Kilmeny's cousin. Could I let him go to prison without giving even a
+warning?"
+
+"Evidently not. So you sacrifice me for him."
+
+"You think I wasn't justified?"
+
+"You'll have to settle that with your conscience," he said coldly.
+"Don't think _I_ would have been justified in your place."
+
+"You would have let him go to prison--the man who had fought for you
+against odds?"
+
+"Does that alter the fact that he is a thief?" Verinder demanded
+angrily.
+
+"It alters my relation to the fact--and it ought to alter yours. He did
+a great service to the woman you are engaged to marry. Does that mean
+nothing to you?"
+
+"The fellow was playing off his own bat, wasn't he? I don't see I owe
+him anything," the mine owner sulkily answered. "Truth is, I'm about fed
+up with him. He's a bad lot. That's the long and short of him. I don't
+deny he's a well-plucked daredevil. What of it? This town is full of
+them. There was no question of his going to prison. I intended only to
+get back some of the ore he and his friends have stolen from me."
+
+"I didn't know that."
+
+"Would it have made any difference if you had?"
+
+She considered. "I'm not sure."
+
+Captain Kilmeny and India emerged from the hotel and bore down upon
+them.
+
+"All ready, Moya," cried India.
+
+"Ready here." Moya knew that it must be plain to both Captain Kilmeny
+and his sister that they had interrupted a disagreement of some sort.
+Characteristically, she took the bull by the horns. "Mr. Verinder and I
+are through quarreling. At least I'm through. Are you?" she asked the
+mine owner with a laugh.
+
+"Didn't know I'd been quarreling, Miss Dwight," Verinder replied
+stiffly.
+
+"You haven't. I've been doing it all." She turned lightly to her
+betrothed. "They didn't send up the pinto, Ned. Hope he hasn't really
+gone lame."
+
+Verinder had been put out of the picture. He turned and walked into the
+lobby of the hotel, suddenly resolved to make a complaint to Lady
+Farquhar about the way Moya Dwight had interfered with his plans. He
+would show that young lady whether she could treat him so outrageously
+without getting the wigging she deserved.
+
+Lady Farquhar listened with a contempt she was careful to veil. It was
+not according to the code that a man should run with the tale of his
+injuries to a young woman's chaperon. Yet she sympathized with him even
+while she defended Moya. No doubt if Captain Kilmeny had been at hand
+his fiancee would have taken the matter to him for decision. In his
+absence she had probably felt that it was incumbent on her to save his
+cousin from trouble.
+
+The mine owner received Lady Farquhar's explanations in skeptical
+silence. In his opinion, Moya's interest in Jack Kilmeny had nothing to
+do with the relationship between that scamp and the captain. He would
+have liked to say so flatly, but he felt it safer to let his manner
+convey the innuendo. In her heart Lady Farquhar was of the same belief.
+She resolved to have a serious talk with Moya before night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+COLTER TAKES A HAND
+
+
+Moya combed her long rippling hair while Lady Farquhar laid down the law
+that hedges a young woman from the satisfaction of her generous
+impulses. For the most part the girl listened in silence, a flush
+burning through each of her dusky cheeks. There was nothing to be said
+that would avail. She might defend the thing she had done, but not the
+feelings that had inspired her action.
+
+"It is all very well to be independent within limits, my dear, but young
+women of our class are subject to the penalties that go with our
+privileges. When I was a girl I rebelled but had to obey. So must you."
+Lady Farquhar interrupted herself to admire the vivid rebel she was
+admonishing. "What wonderful hair you have--so long and thick and wavy.
+It must take a great deal of care."
+
+"Yes," Moya admitted absently.
+
+She did not resent the rebuke Lady Jim had come to give her while she
+was undressing. No doubt she deserved it. She had been unmaidenly, and
+all for love of this light-hearted vagabond who did not care the turn
+of a hand for her. All day her thoughts had been in chaotic ferment. At
+times she lashed herself with the whip of her own scorn because she
+cared for a self-confessed thief, for a man who lived outside the law
+and was not ashamed of it. Again it was the knowledge of her unwanted
+love that flayed her, or of the injustice to her betrothed in so
+passionate a feeling for another man. With all her strong young will she
+fought against this devouring flame that possessed her--and she knew
+that she fought in vain.
+
+In the shipwreck of her self-respect she clung to one spar. Soon they
+would be on their way back to that well-ordered world where she would be
+entirely in the groove of convention. Her engagement to Captain Kilmeny
+would be announced. Surely among the many distractions of London she
+would forget this debonair scamp who had bewitched her.
+
+"You should have come to me--or to India for that matter. She is his
+cousin and is in a different position from you. Don't you see that, my
+dear?" Lady Farquhar asked gently.
+
+And again Moya said "Yes" wearily.
+
+"James and I understand you--how impulsive you are--and how generous.
+But Mr. Kilmeny--and Mr. Verinder--what do you suppose they think?"
+
+"I don't care what Mr. Verinder thinks." And Moya began to coil her
+hair loosely for the night.
+
+"But that's just it--a girl _must_ care. She can't afford to allow
+anyone an opportunity to think unpleasant things about her. She has to
+guard her reputation very jealously."
+
+"And I suppose I've been playing ducks and drakes with mine," Moya said,
+pushing home a hairpin.
+
+"I don't say that, dear. What I say is that Mr. Kilmeny may
+misunderstand your interest in him."
+
+"He may think I'm in love with him. Is that it?" flashed the girl.
+
+"He might. Give a man's vanity the least chance and----"
+
+A reckless impulse to hurt herself--the same which leads a man to grind
+on an aching tooth in heady rage--swept Moya like a flame.
+
+"Then he would think the truth," she interrupted. "What's the use of
+denying it? I ... I'm in love with him."
+
+"Moya." Lady Farquhar's protest came in a horrified gasp.
+
+The young woman turned her slim body in the chair with supple grace so
+as to face her chaperon. Beneath the dark eyes spots of color burned
+through the tan.
+
+"It's true. I've cared ... ever since we met him."
+
+"And he--has he ever made love to you?"
+
+"Never. He's thought only of Joyce. That's what makes it more
+shameless."
+
+Lady Farquhar took a moment to absorb the unwelcome news. "I never
+dreamed it was as bad as this. Of course I knew he interested you a good
+deal, but----"
+
+Moya could not keep scorn of herself out of her voice. "But you didn't
+think I was so lost to decency as to throw myself at his head. You see I
+am."
+
+"Nonsense," cut in her chaperon with sharp common sense. "You're not the
+first girl that has fancied a man who won't do. It's imagination--a good
+deal of it. Make yourself forget him. That's all you can do."
+
+"I can't do that. I've tried," confessed Moya miserably.
+
+"Then try again--and again--and still again. Remember that you are
+engaged to a man worth a dozen of him. Call your pride to help you."
+
+"It seems that I have none. I've told myself forty times that he's a
+highgrader and that doesn't help."
+
+Her friend was alarmed. "You don't mean that you would marry a man who
+is a--a man who steals ore."
+
+"No. I wouldn't marry him ... even if he wanted me--which he doesn't. I
+haven't fallen that far."
+
+"Glad to hear you say that," answered Lady Farquhar with a sigh of
+relief. She took the girl in her arms and patted one of the shoulders
+over which the hair cascaded. "My dear, it's hard. You're intense and
+emotional. But you've got to--to buck up, as James says. You're
+brave--and you're strong-willed. Make a winning fight."
+
+"What about ... Ned?"
+
+"Does he suspect?"
+
+"I don't know. Sometimes I think he does. But you know how generous he
+is. He never says anything, or avoids the subject of his cousin in any
+way." She added, after an instant: "Ned knows that I don't ... love
+him--that is, in one way. He says he is ready to wait till that comes."
+
+"Ned Kilmeny is a man out of a million."
+
+Moya nodded. "Yes. That's why this is so unfair to him. What ought I to
+do? Shall I break the engagement? That's what I want to do, but it will
+hurt him a good deal."
+
+"Wait. Give yourself and him a chance. In a few days we'll be started
+home."
+
+"That's what I've been telling myself. Everything here reminds me
+of--_him_. It will be different then, I try to think. But--down in my
+heart I don't think it will."
+
+"And I know it will," the matron told her promptly. "Time, my dear,
+heals all our woes. Youth has great recuperative power. In a year you
+will wonder how he ever cast such a spell over you."
+
+Moya heard the last belated reveler pass down the corridor to his room
+before she fell asleep. When she awoke it was to see a long shaft of
+early sunshine across the bed.
+
+She rose, took her bath, and dressed for walking. Her desire drew the
+steps of the young woman away from the busy street toward the suburb.
+She walked, as always, with the elastic resilience of unfettered youth.
+But the weight that had been at her heart for two days--since she had
+learned from Jack Kilmeny's lips that he was a highgrader--was still
+tied there too securely to be shaken away by the wonder of the glorious
+newborn day.
+
+Returning to the hotel, she met a man on the porch whose face stirred
+instantly a fugitive memory. He came to her at once, a big
+leather-skinned man with the weatherbeaten look of the West.
+
+"Aren't you the Miss Dwight I've heard Jack Kilmeny mention?"
+
+"Yes. This is Mr. Colter, isn't it?"
+
+He nodded, watching her with hard narrowed eyes. "Something's wrong. Can
+you tell me what it is? Jack's mules--two of them, anyhow--came back to
+the barn during the night with bits of broken harness still attached to
+them. Looks like there had been a runaway and the wagon had come to
+grief. The keeper of the livery stable says Bell took the wagon around
+to Jack's place and left it with him. He was seen driving out of town
+soon after. He has not been seen since."
+
+Her heart flew to alarm. "You mean ... you think he has been hurt?"
+
+"Don't know. He's not in town. That's a cinch. I've raked Goldbanks with
+a toothcomb. Where is he?"
+
+"Couldn't he be at his mine?"
+
+"I sent a boy out there. He's not at the Jack Pot."
+
+"What is it that you think? Tell me," she cried softly.
+
+"You're his friend, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There's some talk around town that he was held up by Bleyer. I came up
+here to see him or Verinder. Foul play of some kind, that's my guess."
+
+"But--you surely don't think that Mr. Bleyer or Mr. Verinder would ...
+hurt him."
+
+The look of dogged resolution on the man's granite face did not soften.
+"They'll have to show me--and by God! if they did----"
+
+Her mind flew with consternation to the attack upon Kilmeny that had
+been made by Bleyer. But Verinder had told her nobody had been hurt.
+Could they have taken the highgrader prisoner? Were they holding him for
+some purpose?
+
+"Mr. Verinder gets up about this time usually," she said.
+
+"I'm waiting for him. He said he would be down at once."
+
+"Will you tell me anything you find out, please? I'll be on the veranda
+upstairs."
+
+Colter joined her a quarter of an hour later. "I saw both Bleyer and
+Verinder. They've got something up their sleeve, but I don't think they
+know where Jack is or what has become of him. They pretended to think I
+was trying to put one over on them."
+
+"What will you do now?"
+
+"I'll go out to the Jack Pot myself. I've reason to believe he intended
+to go there."
+
+"If you find out anything----"
+
+"Yes, I'll let you know."
+
+Moya went directly from Colter to Bleyer. The superintendent entered a
+curt denial to her implied charge.
+
+"Miss Dwight, I don't know what you do or do not know. I see someone has
+been blabbing. But I'll just say this. When I last saw Jack Kilmeny he
+was as sound as I am this minute. I haven't the least idea where he is.
+You don't need to worry about him at all. When he wants to turn up he'll
+be on deck right side up. Don't ask me what his play is, for I don't
+know. It may be to get me and Verinder in bad with the miners. Just be
+sure of one thing: he's grandstanding."
+
+She was amazingly relieved. "I'm so glad. I thought perhaps----"
+
+"----that Mr. Verinder and I had murdered him. Thanks for your good
+opinion of us, but really we didn't," he retorted in his dryest manner.
+
+She laughed. "I did think perhaps you knew where he was."
+
+"Well, I don't--and I don't want to," he snapped. "The less I see of him
+the better I'll be satisfied."
+
+The superintendent of the Verinder properties had found a note addressed
+to him in one of the sacks of quartz taken from Kilmeny. The message,
+genial to the point of impudence, had hoped he had enjoyed his little
+experience as a hold-up. To Bleyer, always a serious-minded man, this
+levity had added insult to injury. Just now the very mention of the
+highgrader's name was a red rag to his temper. It was bad enough to be
+bested without being jeered at by the man who had set a trap for him.
+
+It was well on toward evening before Colter paid his promised visit to
+Miss Dwight. She found him waiting for her upon her return from a ride
+with Captain Kilmeny, Verinder, and Joyce.
+
+Moya, as soon as she had dismounted, walked straight to him.
+
+"What have you found out, Mr. Colter?"
+
+"Not much. It rained during the night and wiped out the tracks of wagon
+wheels. Don't know how far Jack got or where he went, but the remains of
+the wagon are lying at the bottom of a gulch about two miles from the
+Jack Pot."
+
+"How did it get there?"
+
+"I wish you could tell me that. Couldn't have been a runaway or the
+mules would have gone over the edge of the road too." He stepped forward
+quickly as Verinder was about to pass into the hotel. "I want to have a
+talk with you."
+
+The little man adjusted his monocle. "Ye-es. What about, my man?"
+
+"About Jack Kilmeny. Where is he? What do you know? I'm going to find
+out if I have to tear it from your throat."
+
+Verinder was no coward, but he was a product of our modern
+super-civilization. He glanced around hastily. The captain had followed
+Joyce into the lobby. Moya and he were alone on the piazza, with this
+big savage who looked quite capable of carrying out his threat.
+
+"Don't talk demned nonsense," the mine owner retorted, flushing angrily.
+
+Colter did not answer in words. The strong muscular fingers of his left
+hand closed on the right arm of Verinder just below the shoulder with a
+pressure excruciatingly painful. Dobyans found himself moving
+automatically toward the end of the porch. He had to clench his teeth
+to keep from crying out.
+
+"Let me alone, you brute," he gasped.
+
+Colter paid no attention until his victim was backed against the rail in
+a corner. Then he released the millionaire he was manhandling.
+
+"You're going to tell me everything you know. Get that into your head.
+Or, by God, I'll wring your neck for you."
+
+The Englishman had never before been confronted with such a situation.
+He was a citizen of a country where wealth hedges a man from such
+assaults. The color ebbed from his face, then came back with a rush.
+
+"Go to the devil, you big bully," he flung out sharply.
+
+Moya, taken by surprise at Colter's abrupt desertion of her, had watched
+with amazement the subsequent flare-up. Now she crossed the porch toward
+them.
+
+"What are you doing, Mr. Colter?"
+
+"None of your funeral, ma'am," the miner answered bluntly, not for a
+moment lifting his hard eyes from Verinder. "Better unload what you
+know. I've had a talk with Quint Saladay. I know all he knows, that
+Bleyer and you and him with two other lads held up Jack and took his ore
+away. The three of them left you and Bleyer guarding Jack. What did you
+do with him?"
+
+"It's a bally lie. I didn't stay with Bleyer to guard him."
+
+"That's right. You didn't. You came back with the others. But you know
+what Bleyer did. Out with it."
+
+"I don't admit a word of what you say," said Verinder doggedly.
+
+Colter had trapped him into a half admission, but he did not intend to
+say any more.
+
+Moya spoke, a little timidly. "Wait a minute please, Mr. Colter. Let me
+talk with Mr. Verinder alone. I think he'll tell me what you want to
+know."
+
+Jack's friend looked at her with sharp suspicion. Was she trying to make
+a dupe of him? Her candid glance denied it.
+
+"All right. Talk to him all you like, but you'll do your talking here,"
+he agreed curtly before he turned on his heel and walked away a few
+steps.
+
+"You must tell him what he wants to know, Mr. Verinder," urged the young
+woman in a low voice. "Something has happened to his friend. We must
+help clear it up."
+
+"I'm not responsible for what has happened to his friend. What do you
+want me to do? Peach on Bleyer, is that it?"
+
+"No. Send for him and tell Mr. Colter the truth."
+
+"I'll see him hanged and quartered first," he replied angrily.
+
+"If you don't, I'll tell what I know. There's a life at stake," Moya
+cried, a trace of agitation in her voice.
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" he shrugged. "The fellow's full of tricks. He worked one
+on us the other night. I'm hanged if I let him play me again."
+
+"You must. I'll tell Captain Kilmeny and Lord Farquhar. I'll not let it
+rest this way. The matter is serious."
+
+"I'm not going to be bullied into saying a word. That's the long and
+short of it," he repeated in disgust. "Let Bleyer tell the fellow if he
+wants to. I'll have nothing to do with it. We're not responsible for
+what has happened--if anything has."
+
+"Then I'll go and get Mr. Bleyer."
+
+"Just as you please. I'd see this ruffian at Halifax first, if you ask
+_me_." The angry color flushed his face again as he thought of the
+insult to which he had been subjected.
+
+To Colter Moya explained her purpose. He nodded agreement without words.
+
+After two or three attempts she got the superintendent on the telephone
+at the Mollie Gibson mine and arranged with him that he was to come to
+the hotel at once. A few minutes later he drove up in his car.
+
+Moya put the case to him.
+
+Bleyer turned to his employer. "You want me to tell Colter what I know?"
+
+"I don't care a turn of my hand whether you tell the fellow or not,"
+drawled Verinder, ignoring the presence of Colter.
+
+The superintendent peered at Moya in his nearsighted fashion over the
+glasses on his nose. "Can't see that it matters much, Miss Dwight. I'm
+not worrying a bit about Jack Kilmeny, but, if Colter and you are, I'm
+willing to tell what I know on condition that you keep the facts to
+yourselves."
+
+"I'll keep quiet if you haven't injured Jack in any way," Colter
+amended.
+
+"We haven't. He was sound as a new dollar when I left him Tuesday night.
+Want to hear the particulars?"
+
+"That's what I'm here for," snapped Colter.
+
+Bleyer told the whole story so far as he knew it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+SPIRIT RAPPING?
+
+
+Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny left next day for another short hunting
+trip. The captain had offered to give it up, but Moya had urged upon him
+that it would not be fair to disappoint his companion. He had gone
+reluctantly, because he saw that his fiancee was worried. His own
+opinion was that his cousin Jack had disappeared for reasons of his own.
+
+Colter did not relax in his search. But as the days passed hope almost
+died within him. Jack had plenty of enemies, as an aggressive fighter in
+a new country always must have. His friend's fear was that some of them
+had decoyed Kilmeny to his death. The suspicions of the miner centered
+upon Peale and Trefoyle, both because Jack had so recently had trouble
+with them and because they knew beforehand of his intention to remove
+the ore. But he could find no evidence upon which to base his feeling,
+though he and Curly, in company with a deputy sheriff, had put the
+Cornishmen through a grilling examination.
+
+It had been understood that the young women should take a trip through
+the Never Quit before they left Goldbanks, but for one reason or another
+this had been postponed until after the captain and Farquhar had started
+on their final hunting expedition. The second afternoon after their
+departure was the one decided upon for the little adventure.
+
+Verinder, with the extravagance that went hand in hand with an
+occasional astonishing parsimony, had ordered oilskin suits and
+waterproof boots made especially for his guests. A room was reserved for
+the young ladies at the mine, equipped for this one occasion to serve as
+a boudoir where they might dress in comfort.
+
+The mine owner's guests donned, with a good deal of hilarious merriment,
+the short skirts, the boots, and the rubber helmets. The costumes could
+not have been called becoming, but they were eminently suited for the
+wet damp tunnels of the Never Quit.
+
+After they had entered the cage it was a little terrifying to be shot so
+rapidly down into the blackness of the mine.
+
+"Don't be afraid. It's quite safe," Bleyer told them cheerfully.
+
+At the tenth level the elevator stopped and they emerged into an open
+space.
+
+"We're going to follow this drift," explained the superintendent.
+
+They seated themselves in ore cars and were wheeled into a cavern
+lighted at intervals by electric bulbs. Presently the cars slowed down
+and the occupants descended.
+
+"This way," ordered Bleyer.
+
+They followed in single file into a hot, damp tunnel, which dripped
+moisture in big drops from the roof upon a rough, uneven floor of stone
+and dirt where pools of water had occasionally gathered. The darkness
+increased as they moved forward, driven back by the candles of the men
+for a space scarce farther than they could reach with outstretched
+hands.
+
+Moya, bringing up the rear, could hear Bleyer explain the workings to
+those at his heel. He talked of stopes, drifts, tunnels, wage scales,
+shifts, high-grade ore, and other subjects that were as Greek to Joyce
+and India. The atmosphere was oppressively close and warm, and the
+oilskins that Moya wore seemed to weigh heavily upon her. She became
+aware with some annoyance at herself that a faintness was stealing over
+her brain and a mistiness over her eyes. To steady herself she stopped,
+catching at the rough wall for support. The others, unaware that she was
+not following, moved on. With a half articulate little cry she sank to
+the ground.
+
+When she came to herself the lights had disappeared. She was alone in
+the most profound darkness she had ever known. It seemed to press upon
+her so ponderably as almost to be tangible. The girl was frightened. Her
+imagination began to conjure all sorts of dangers. Of cave-ins and
+explosions she had heard and read a good deal. Anything was possible in
+this thousand-foot deep grave. In a frightened, ineffective little voice
+she cried out to her friends.
+
+Instantly there came an answer--a faint tapping on the wall almost at
+her ear. She listened breathlessly, and caught again that faint far
+tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap. Instinctively her hand went out,
+groping along the wall until it fell upon a pipe. Even as she touched
+this the sound came again, and along with it the faintest of vibrations.
+She knew that somebody at a distance was hitting the pipe with a piece
+of quartz or metal.
+
+Stooping, she found a bit of broken rock. Three times she tapped the
+pipe. An answer came at once.
+
+Tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap!
+
+She tried two knocks. Again the response of seven taps sounded. Four
+blows brought still seven. Why always seven? She did not know, but she
+was greatly comforted to know that her friends were in communication
+with her. After all she was not alone.
+
+A light glimmered at the end of the tunnel and moved slowly toward her.
+Bleyer's voice called her name. Presently the whole party was about her
+with sympathetic questions and explanations.
+
+She made light of her fainting attack, but Verinder insisted on getting
+her back to the upper air in spite of her protests. He had discovered
+that Joyce was quite ready to return to the sunlight, now that her
+curiosity was satisfied. A very little of anything that was unpleasant
+went a long way with Miss Seldon, and there was something about this
+underground tomb that reminded her strongly of an immense grave.
+
+At dinner Verinder referred to the attack of vertigo. "Feel quite fit
+again, Miss Dwight?"
+
+"Quite, thank you." Moya was a little irritated at the reference,
+because she was ashamed of having given way to physical weakness. "It
+was nothing. I was a goose. That's all."
+
+Bleyer, a guest for the evening, defended the young woman from her own
+scorn. "It often takes people that way the first time, what with the
+heat and the closeness. I once knew a champion pugilist to keel over
+while he was going through a mine."
+
+"Were you afraid when you found yourself alone?" Joyce asked.
+
+"I was until you tapped."
+
+India looked puzzled. "Tapped. What do you mean?"
+
+"On the pipe."
+
+"What pipe?"
+
+"The one that ran through the tunnel."
+
+Miss Kilmeny shook her head. "I didn't see anybody tap. Perhaps one of
+us touched it by chance."
+
+"No. That couldn't be. The tap came seven times together, and after I
+had answered it seven times more."
+
+"Seven times?" asked Bleyer quickly.
+
+"Yes--seven. But, if you didn't tap, who did?"
+
+"Sure it wasn't imagination?" Verinder suggested.
+
+"Imagination! I tell you it was repeated again and again," Moya said
+impatiently.
+
+"Spirit rapping," surmised Joyce lightly. "It doesn't matter, anyhow,
+since it served its work of comforting Moya."
+
+"It might have been some of the workmen," Lady Farquhar guessed.
+
+"Must have been," agreed Bleyer. "And yet--we're not working that end of
+the mine now. The men had no business there. Odd that it was seven raps.
+That is a call for help. It means danger."
+
+A bell of warning began to toll in Moya's heart. It rang as yet no clear
+message to her brain, but the premonition of something sinister and
+deadly sent a sinking sensation through her.
+
+Verinder sat up with renewed interest. "I say, you know--spirit rapping.
+Weren't you telling me, Bleyer, that there was a big accident there some
+years ago? Perhaps the ghosts of some of the lost miners were sending a
+message to their wives. Eh, what?"
+
+"The accident was in the Golden Nugget, an adjoining mine. The property
+was pretty well worked out and has never been opened since the
+disaster."
+
+The color had ebbed from Moya's lips. She was a sane young woman not
+given to nerves. But she had worried a great deal over the disappearance
+of Jack Kilmeny. This, coming on top of it, shook her composure. For she
+was fighting with the dread that the spirit of the man she loved had
+been trying to talk with her.
+
+Joyce chattered gayly. "How weird! Moya, you must write an account of
+your experience for the Society for Psychical Research. Put me in it,
+please."
+
+"Of course, it must have been some of the men, but I don't see----"
+
+Moya interrupted the superintendent sharply. An intuition, like a flash
+of light, had illumined her brain. "Where does that pipe run, Mr.
+Bleyer?"
+
+"Don't know. Maps of the workings at the office would show."
+
+"Will you please find out?"
+
+"Glad to look it up for you, Miss Dwight. I'm a little curious myself."
+
+"I mean now--at once."
+
+He glanced at her in quick surprise. Was she asking him to leave the
+dinner table to do it? Lady Farquhar saw how colorless Moya was and came
+to the rescue.
+
+"My dear, you are a little unstrung, aren't you?" she said gently. "I
+think we might find something more cheerful to talk about. We always
+have the weather."
+
+Moya rose, trembling. "No. I know now who called for help. It was Jack
+Kilmeny."
+
+Verinder was the first to break the strained silence. "But that's
+nonsense, you know."
+
+"It's the truth. He was calling for help."
+
+"Where from? What would he be doing down in a mine?"
+
+"I don't know.... Yes, I do, too," Moya corrected herself, voice
+breaking under the stress of her emotion. "He has been put down there to
+die."
+
+"To die." Joyce echoed the words in a frightened whisper.
+
+Dobyans laughed. "This is absurd. Who under heaven would put him there?"
+
+A second flash of light burned in upon the girl. "That man, Peale--and
+the other ruffian. They knew about the shipment just as you did. They
+waylaid him ... and buried him in some old mine." Moya faced them
+tensely, a slim wraith of a girl with dark eyes that blazed. She had
+forgotten all about conventions, all about what they would think of her.
+The one thing she saw was Jack Kilmeny in peril, calling for help.
+
+But Lady Farquhar remembered what Moya did not. It was her duty to
+defend her charge against the errant impulses of the heart, to screen
+them from the callous eyes of an unsympathetic world.
+
+"You jump to conclusions, my dear. Sit down and we'll talk it over."
+
+"No. He called for help. I'm going to take it to him."
+
+Again Verinder laughed unpleasantly. Moya did not at that moment know
+the man was in existence. One sure purpose flooded her whole being. She
+was going to save her lover.
+
+India wavered. She, too, had lost color. "But--you're only guessing,
+dear."
+
+"You'll find it's true. We must follow that pipe and rescue him.
+To-night."
+
+"Didn't know you were subject to nerve attacks, Miss Dwight," derided
+Verinder uneasily.
+
+Moya put her hands in front of her eyes as if to shut out the picture of
+what she saw. "He's been there for five days ... starving, maybe." She
+shuddered.
+
+"You're only guessing, Miss Dwight. What facts have you to back it?"
+Bleyer asked.
+
+"We must start at once--this very hour." Moya had recovered herself and
+spoke with quiet decision. "But first we must find where the pipe
+leads."
+
+Bleyer answered the appeal in Lady Farquhar's eyes by rising. He
+believed it to be a piece of hysterical folly, just as she did. But some
+instinct of chivalry in him responded to the call made upon him. He was
+going, not to save Kilmeny from an imaginary death, but to protect the
+girl that loved him from showing all the world where her heart was.
+
+"I'll be back inside of an hour--just as soon as I can trace that pipe
+for you, Miss Dwight," he said.
+
+"After all, Moya may be right," India added, to back her friend.
+
+"It's just possible," Bleyer conceded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ACID TEST
+
+
+Jack Kilmeny opened his eyes to find himself in darkness utter and
+complete except for a pinpoint of light gleaming from far above. His
+head was whirling and throbbing painfully. Something warm and moist
+dropped into his eyes, and when he put his hand up to investigate the
+cause he knew it must be blood from a wound.
+
+Faintly the sound of voices and of harsh laughter drifted down to him.
+Presently this died away. The stillness was almost uncanny.
+
+"Something laid me out, I reckon. Must have been a bad whack." His
+finger found a ridge above the temple which had been plowed through the
+thick curly hair. "Looks as though a glancing bullet hit me. Golden luck
+it didn't finish the job."
+
+He moved. A sharp pain shot through his lower right leg. Trying to rise,
+he slipped down at once from a badly sprained ankle. Every muscle in his
+body ached, as if he had been jarred by a hard fall.
+
+"Better have a look around first," he told himself.
+
+Groping in his pocket, he found a match case and struck a light. What he
+saw made him shudder. From the ledge upon which he lay fell away a gulf,
+the bottom of which could be only guessed. His eyes, becoming accustomed
+to the darkness, made out that he was in some sort of shaft, thirty feet
+or more below the surface. Rotten from age, the timberings had slipped
+and become jammed. Upon some of these he was resting. The sprained
+ankle, by preventing him from moving, had saved him from plunging down
+the well.
+
+He held out a silver dollar and dropped it. From the time the coin took
+to strike Jack judged he was a hundred feet from the bottom.
+
+The flare of a second match showed him a wall ladder leading down, but
+unfortunately it did not extend above him except in rotting fragments.
+What had happened he could guess. Supposing him to be dead, his enemies
+had dropped the body down this deserted shaft. Not for a moment did he
+doubt who they were. The voices had been unmistakably Cornish, and even
+without that evidence he would have guessed Peale and his partner as the
+guilty ones.
+
+Since he could not go up he went down, moving warily so as not to jar
+loose the timbers upon which he lay. Every rung of the ladder he tested
+with great care before he put his weight upon it. Each step of the
+journey down sent a throb of pain from the ricked ankle, even though he
+rested his weight on his hands while he lowered himself. From the last
+rung--it was by actual count the one hundred forty-third--he stepped to
+the ground.
+
+Another match showed him a drift running from the foot of the shaft.
+Along this he dragged himself slowly, uncertain of direction but
+determined to find out what possibility of escape his prison offered.
+For two hundred yards the tunnel led forward and brought him up sharply
+at an _impasse_. A cave-in blocked farther advance.
+
+"Check," Jack told himself aloud grimly.
+
+He knew now that his situation was a very serious one, for he had been
+flung alive into a grave that offered only a slight prospect of escape.
+He was without food, effectually cut off from the surface of the earth,
+and none but those who had assaulted him knew that he was buried.
+
+The alternatives that lay before him were plain. He might climb the
+ladder again to the timber ledge and keep calling for help, or he might
+attempt to dig a way over the cave-in with his hands and his
+pocketknife, trusting that the tunnel led to another shaft. The former
+was a chance pure and simple, and a slender one at that. It was not
+likely that anybody would pass the mouth of a deserted shaft far up in
+the hills at this season of the year. But it was quite within the
+probabilities that the tunnel led to some of the workings of a live
+property. Many miles of underground drifts were connected by
+intercepting stopes of adjoining mines. If he could force a way through
+the cave-in there might be safety beyond. To go moling into such a place
+without timbering would be a dangerous business, but the crisis was one
+that justified any risk.
+
+He took stock of his assets. Fortunately he had bought at a lunch
+counter a ham sandwich to stay his appetite during the night trip. This
+was still in his pocket, badly mashed but still edible. Five cigars were
+in the case he carried and upon his person all told he found eleven
+matches. A little trickle of water ran through the tunnel and gave
+assurance that he would not die of thirst. His pocketknife was a
+serviceable one and he had plenty of physical strength.
+
+Jack decided that he would eat half of the sandwich that day and reserve
+the rest for the second one. His cigars were precious luxuries to be
+indulged in once every twenty-four hours after he had knocked off work.
+
+He attacked the cave-in with the cool energy that characterized him. Out
+of a piece of board he fashioned a kind of shovel with his knife. Bits
+of broken timbering lay at the foot of the shaft. These he dragged into
+the tunnel for fuel to feed a small fire which he built to give light
+for the work. All through the night and till noon the following day he
+dug among the fallen rocks and dirt, cleaning this _debris_ away after
+he had loosened it with his bare hands.
+
+The impact of the fall when he had been thrown down the shaft had jarred
+him greatly. With the slightest movement of the body his back and
+shoulders ached, sending shoots of pain in protest to his brain. The
+sprained ankle he had bound tightly in a wet handkerchief, but every
+time his weight rested on that leg he had to grit his teeth. But it was
+not in him to quit. He stuck to his job till he had done the shift set
+himself.
+
+At noon he crawled back to the foot of the shaft. He was fagged to
+exhaustion. For half an hour he lay stretched on his back with every
+muscle relaxed.
+
+Presently he cut from his coat the pocket that contained the sandwich
+and divided the mash of ham and bread into two parts. One of these he
+ate. The other he returned to the coat.
+
+Favoring his ricked ankle as best he could, Jack climbed the wall ladder
+to the ledge upon which he had found himself lying the previous night.
+Five minutes' examination of the walls showed him that there was no
+chance to reach the top of the shaft unaided. He tested the jammed
+timbers to make sure they were secure before he put his weight upon
+them. During the next six hours he called aloud every few minutes to
+attract the attention of anyone who might chance to be passing near.
+
+Toward evening he treated himself to his first cigar, making the most
+of the comfort that it gave him. When the stub grew short he held it on
+the small blade of his knife so as not to miss a puff. What was left he
+wrapped in a pocket handkerchief for later use.
+
+As the stars began to come out in the little patch of blue sky he could
+see just above his prison Jack lowered himself again to the foot of the
+shaft. Here he lay down a second time and within five minutes had fallen
+into a deep sleep.
+
+About midnight he awakened and was aware at once of a ravenous hunger.
+He was still resolute to win a way out, though the knowledge pressed on
+him that his chances were slender at the best. Till morning he worked
+without a moment's rest. The fever in his ankle and the pain of the
+sprain had increased, but he could not afford to pay any attention to
+them. Blood from his scarred, torn hands ran down his wrists. Every
+muscle in his abused body ached. Still he stabbed with his knife into
+the earth that filled the tunnel and still he pulled great rocks back
+with his shovel. All his life he had fought for his own hand. He would
+not let himself believe fate had played so scurvy a trick as to lock him
+alive into a tomb closed so tightly that he could not pry a way out.
+
+When his watch told him it was eight o'clock he staggered to the shaft
+again and lay down on his back to rest. Before climbing to the platform
+above he finished the sandwich. He was very hungry and could have eaten
+enough for two men had he been given the opportunity. Again for hours he
+called every few minutes at the top of his voice.
+
+In his vest pocket were a pencil and a notebook used for keeping the
+accounts of the highgraders with whom he did business. To pass the time
+he set down the story of the crime which had brought him here and his
+efforts to free himself.
+
+After darkness fell he let himself down to the foot of the shaft and
+slept. Either from hunger or from fever in his ankle he slept brokenly.
+He was conscious of a little delirium in his waking spells, but the
+coming of midnight found him master of himself, though a trifle
+lightheaded.
+
+It was impossible to work as steadily as he had done during the two
+previous nights. Hunger and pain and toil were doing their best to wear
+out his strength. His limbs moved laggardly. Once he fell asleep in the
+midst of his labor. He dreamed of Moya, and after he awakened--as he
+presently did with a start--she seemed so near that it would scarce have
+surprised him if in the darkness his hands had come in contact with the
+soft flesh of her vivid face. Nor did it strike him as at all odd that
+it was Moya and not Joyce who was visiting him when he was in prison.
+Sometimes she came to him as the little girl of the _Victorian_, but
+more often the face he saw was the mocking one of the young woman, in
+which gayety overran the tender sadness of the big, dusky eyes beneath
+which tiny freckles had been sprinkled. More than once he clearly heard
+her whisper courage to him.
+
+Next day the notes in his diary were more fragmentary.
+
+     "Broke my rule and smoked two cigars to-day. Just finished my
+     fourth. Leaves one more. I drink a great deal. It helps me to
+     forget I'm hungry. Find a cigar goes farther if I smoke it in
+     sections. I chew the stubs while I'm working.
+
+     "Have tunneled in about seventeen feet. No sign that I'm near the
+     end of the cave-in. There's a lot of hell in being buried alive.
+
+     "Think I'm losing my voice from shouting so much when I'm in the
+     shaft. Gave it up to-day and let little Moya call for me. She's a
+     trump. Wish she'd stay here all the time and not keep coming and
+     going."
+
+The jottings on the fourth day show the increase of the delirium.
+Sometimes his mind appears to be quite clear, then it wanders to queer
+fancies.
+
+     "Last cigar gone. Got sick from eating the stub. Violent retchings.
+     Kept falling asleep while working. Twenty-nine feet done--surely
+     reach the end to-morrow.... Another cave-in just after I crawled
+     out from my tunnel. All my work wiped out. Moya, the little devil,
+     laughed and said it served a highgrader right....
+
+     "Have telegraphed for help. Can't manage alone. Couldn't make it up
+     the shaft and had to give up the climb. Ordered a big breakfast at
+     the Silver Dollar--steak and mushrooms and hot cakes. The telegraph
+     wires run through pipe along floor of tunnel. Why don't the
+     operator stay on his job? I tap my signals and get no answer."
+
+He began to talk to himself in a rambling sort of way. Sometimes he
+would try to justify himself for highgrading in jerky half-coherent
+phrases, sometimes he argued with Peale that he had better let him out.
+But even in his delirious condition he stuck to his work in the tunnel,
+though he was scarce able to drag himself about.
+
+As the sickness grew on him, the lightheaded intervals became more
+frequent. In one of these it occurred to him that he had struck high
+grade ore and he filled his pockets with samples taken from the cave-in.
+He spent a good deal of time explaining to Moya patiently over and over
+again that the business of highgrading was justified by the conditions
+under which the miners lived. There was no sequence to his thoughts.
+They came in flashes without logical connection. It became, for
+instance, a firm obsession that the pipe running through the tunnel was
+a telegraph wire by means of which he could communicate with the outside
+world if the operator would only stay on duty. But his interest in the
+matter was intermittent.
+
+It is suggestive of his condition that when Moya's answer came to his
+seven taps he took it quite as a matter of course.
+
+"The son of a Greaser is back on the job at last," he said aloud without
+the least excitement. "Now, I'll get that breakfast I ordered."
+
+He crawled back to the foot of the shaft in a childish, absurd
+confidence that the food he craved would soon be sent down to him. While
+he waited, Jack fell into light sleep where he lost himself in fancies
+that voiced themselves in incoherent snatches of talk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+CAPTAIN KILMENY RETIRES
+
+
+A voice calling his name from the top of the shaft brought Jack Kilmeny
+back to consciousness. He answered.
+
+A shout of joy boomed down to him in Colter's heavy bass. He could hear,
+too, the sweet troubled tones of a woman.
+
+"Hurry, please, hurry.... Thank God, we're in time."
+
+"Got that breakfast with you, little neighbor," Jack called up weakly.
+He did not need to be told that Moya Dwight was above, and, since she
+was there, of course she had brought him the breakfast that he had
+ordered from the Silver Dollar.
+
+"Get back into the tunnel, Jack," Colter presently shouted.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"We're lowering someone to you. The timberings are rotten and they might
+fall on you. Get back."
+
+"All right."
+
+Five minutes later the rescuer reached the foot of the shaft. He stood
+for a moment with a miner's lamp lifted above his head and peered into
+the gloom.
+
+"Where away, Jack?"
+
+The man was Ned Kilmeny. He and Lord Farquhar had returned to the hotel
+just after dinner. The captain had insisted--all the more because there
+was some danger in it--that he should be the man lowered to the aid of
+his cousin.
+
+"Bring that breakfast?" Jack snapped, testily.
+
+"Yes, old man. It's waiting up above. Brought some soup down with me."
+
+"I ordered it two hours ago. What's been keeping you? I'm going to
+complain of the service."
+
+The captain saw at once that Jack was lightheaded and he humored him.
+
+"Yes, I would. Now drink this soup."
+
+The imprisoned man drained the bucket to the last drop.
+
+Ned loosened the rope from his own body and fastened it about that of
+his cousin. He gave the signal and Jack was hauled very carefully to the
+surface in such a way as not to collide with the jammed timbers near the
+top. Colter and Bleyer lifted the highgrader over the edge of the well,
+where he collapsed at once into the arms of his friend.
+
+Moya, a flask in her hand, stooped over the sick man where he lay on
+the grass. Her fine face was full of poignant sympathy.
+
+Kilmeny's mind was quite clear now. The man was gaunt as a famished
+wolf. Bitten deep into his face were the lines that showed how closely
+he had shaved death. But in his eye was the gay inextinguishable gleam
+of the thoroughbred.
+
+"Ain't I the quitter, Miss Dwight? Keeling over just like a sick baby."
+
+The young woman choked over her answer. "You mustn't talk yet. Drink
+this, please."
+
+He drank, and later he ate sparingly of the food she had hastily
+gathered from the dinner table and brought with her. In jerky little
+sentences he sketched his adventure, mingling fiction with fact as the
+fever grew on him again.
+
+Bleyer, himself a game man, could not withhold his admiration after he
+had heard Captain Kilmeny's story of what he had found below. The two,
+with Moya, were riding behind the wagon in which the rescued man lay.
+
+"Think of the pluck of the fellow--boring away at that cave-in when any
+minute a million tons of rock and dirt might tumble down and crush the
+life out of him. That's a big enough thing. But add to it his game leg
+and his wound and starvation on top of that. I'll give it to him for the
+gamest fellow that ever went down into a mine."
+
+"That's not all," the captain added quietly. "He must have tunneled in
+about twenty-five feet when the roof caved again. Clean bowled out as he
+was, Jack tackled the job a second time."
+
+Moya could not think of what had taken place without a film coming over
+her eyes and a sob choking her throat. A vagabond and worse he might be,
+but Jack Kilmeny held her love beyond recall. It was useless to remind
+herself that he was unworthy. None the less, she gloried in the splendid
+courage of the man. It flooded her veins joyously even while her heart
+was full to overflowing with tender pity for his sufferings. Whatever
+else he might be, Jack Kilmeny was every inch a man. He had in him the
+dynamic spark that brought him smiling in his weakness from the presence
+of the tragedy that had almost engulfed him.
+
+There was a little discussion between Colter and Captain Kilmeny as to
+which of them should take care of the invalid. The captain urged that he
+would get better care at the hotel, where Lady Farquhar and India could
+look after him. Colter referred the matter to Jack.
+
+"I'm not going to burden Lady Farquhar or India. Colter can look out for
+me," the sick man said.
+
+"It's no trouble. India won't be satisfied unless you come to the
+hotel," Moya said in a low voice.
+
+He looked at her, was about to decline, and changed his mind. The
+appeal in her eyes was too potent.
+
+"I'm in the hands of my friends. Settle it any way you like, Miss
+Dwight. Do whatever you want with me, except put me back in that hell."
+
+After a doctor had seen Jack and taken care of his ankle, after the
+trained nurse had arrived and been put in charge of the sick room,
+Captain Kilmeny made a report to Moya and his sister.
+
+"He's gone to sleep already. The doctor says he'll probably be as well
+as ever in a week, thanks to you, Moya."
+
+"Thanks to you, Ned," she amended.
+
+"He sent to you this record of how he spent his time down there--said it
+might amuse you."
+
+The Captain looked straight at her as he spoke.
+
+"I'll read it."
+
+"Do. You'll find something on the last page that will interest you. Now,
+I'm going to say good-night. It's time little girls were in bed."
+
+He kissed his sister and Moya, rather to the surprise of the latter, for
+Captain Kilmeny never insisted upon the rights of a lover. There was
+something on his face she did not quite understand. It was as if he were
+saying good-by instead of good-night.
+
+She understood it presently. Ned had written a note and pinned it to the
+last page of the little book. She read it twice, and then again in
+tears. It told her that the soldier had read truly the secret her
+anxiety had flaunted in the face of all her friends.
+
+     "It's no go, dear girl. You've done your best, but you don't love
+     me. You never will. Afraid there's no way left but for me to
+     release you. So you're free again, little sweetheart.
+
+     "I know you won't misunderstand. Never in my life have I cared for
+     you so much as I do to-night. But caring isn't enough. I've had my
+     chance and couldn't win out. May you have good hunting wherever you
+     go."
+
+The note was signed "Ned."
+
+Her betrothed had played the game like the gentleman he was to a losing
+finish. She knew he would not whimper or complain, that he would meet
+her to-morrow cheerfully and easily, hiding even from her the wound in
+his heart. He was a better man than his cousin. She could not deny to
+herself that his gallantry had a finer edge. His sense of right was
+better developed and his courage quite as steady. Ned Kilmeny had won
+his V. C. before he was twenty-five. He had carried to a successful
+issue one of the most delicate diplomatic missions of recent years.
+Everybody conceded that he had a future. If Jack had never appeared on
+her horizon she would have married Ned and been to him a loving wife.
+But the harum-scarum cousin had made this impossible.
+
+Why? Why had her roving heart gone out to this attractive scamp who did
+not want her love or care for it? She did not know. The thing was as
+unexplainable as it was inescapable. All the training of her life had
+shaped her to other ends. Lady Farquhar would explain it as a glamour
+cast by a foolish girl's fancy. But Moya knew the tide of feeling which
+raced through her was born not of fancy but of the true romance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+TWO IN A BUCKET
+
+
+Jack heard the story of his rescue from India. He surprised her alone in
+the breakfast room by hobbling in one morning after the rest had gone.
+
+She popped a question directly at him. "Did the doctor say you could get
+up?"
+
+"Didn't ask him," he answered with a laugh, and dropped into a seat
+across the table.
+
+Shaven and dressed in a clean freshly pressed suit, he looked a
+different man from the haggard grimy vagabond Captain Kilmeny had
+brought back with him three days earlier. The eyes were still rather
+sunken and the face a bit drawn, but otherwise he was his very competent
+and debonair self. His "Good mornin', India," was as cheery and matter
+of fact as if those five days of horror had never existed.
+
+"Don't believe it will hurt you." Her bright eyes were warm in their
+approval of him. "You look a lot fitter than you did even yesterday.
+It's awfully jolly to see you around again, Cousin Jack."
+
+"I'm enjoying it myself," he conceded. "Anything of importance in that
+covered dish over there?"
+
+"Tell me all about it," she ordered, handing him the bacon. Then, with a
+shudder, she added: "Must have been rather awful down there."
+
+"Bad enough," he admitted lightly.
+
+"Tell me." She leaned forward, chin in hand.
+
+"What's the use? Those fellows put me down. Your brother took me up.
+That's all."
+
+"It isn't all. Ned says it is perfectly marvelous the way you dug that
+tunnel and escaped from being crushed, and then dug it again after it
+had caved."
+
+"Couldn't lie down and quit, could I? A man in the hole I was can't pick
+and choose." He smiled lazily at her and took a muffin from a plate
+handed him by the waiter. "My turn to ask questions. I want the full
+story of how you guessed I was in the west shaft of the Golden Nugget."
+
+"Haven't you heard? It was Moya guessed it--from the tapping on the
+pipe, you know."
+
+"So I've been told. Now let's have the particulars." His eyes went
+arrow-straight into hers and rested there.
+
+India told him. She knew that Ned would make a safer husband for Moya
+than this forceful adventurer. It was quite likely to be on the cards
+that he cared nothing for her friend. Indeed, his desperate flirtation
+with Joyce indicated as much. Moreover, Moya would not marry a man whom
+she could not respect, one who made his living by dishonest practices.
+But in spite of all these objections Miss Kilmeny told her cousin how
+Moya had fought for his life against ridicule and unbelief, regardless
+of what any of them might think of her.
+
+He made one comment when she had finished. "So I have to thank Moya
+Dwight for my life."
+
+"Moya alone. They laughed at her, but she wouldn't give up. I never saw
+anybody so stubborn. There's something splendid in her. She didn't care
+what any of us thought. The one thing in her mind was that she was going
+to save you. So Mr. Bleyer had to get up from dinner and find out from
+the maps where that pipe went. He traced it to the old west shaft of the
+Golden Nugget."
+
+"And what _did_ you think?" he asked, watching her steadily.
+
+"I admired her pluck tremendously."
+
+"Did Verinder--and Bleyer--and Lady Farquhar?"
+
+"How do I know what they thought?" flamed the girl. "If Mr. Verinder is
+cad enough----" She stopped, recalling certain obligations she was under
+to that gentleman.
+
+"Why did she do it?"
+
+She flashed a look of feminine scorn at him. "You'll have to ask Moya
+that--if you want to know."
+
+He nodded his head slowly. "That's just what I'm going to do."
+
+"You'll have more time to talk with her--now that Joyce is engaged and
+daren't flirt with you," his cousin suggested maliciously.
+
+Though he tried to carry this off with a laugh, the color mounted to his
+face. "I've been several kinds of an idiot in my time."
+
+"Don't you dare try any nonsense with Moya," her friend cried, a little
+fiercely.
+
+"No," he agreed.
+
+"She's not Joyce."
+
+He had an answer for that. "I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd take me."
+
+"You mean you...?"
+
+"Yes. From the first day I met her again. And I didn't know it till I
+was down in that hell hole. Shall I tell you something?" He put his arms
+on the table and leaned toward her with shining eyes. "She was with me
+down there most of the time. Any time I stopped to listen I could hear
+her whisper courage in that low, sweet voice of hers."
+
+"You know about her and Ned?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's a better man than you are, Jack."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you won't let him have her."
+
+"No, by God, not unless she loves him."
+
+"She would have loved him if it hadn't been for you."
+
+"You mean she loves me?"
+
+"She won't marry you. She can't."
+
+"Why not? Because I don't belong to her social set?"
+
+"No. That would be reason enough for Joyce or me, but I don't think it
+would stop Moya."
+
+"You mean--highgrading?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Joyce interrupted further confidences by making her usual late
+appearance for breakfast. At sight of Kilmeny her eyes brightened. Life
+always became more interesting for her when a possible man was present.
+Instantly she came forward with a touch of reluctant eagerness that was
+very effective.
+
+"I'm glad to see you up again--so glad, Mr. Kilmeny."
+
+In the pretty breakfast gown which displayed her soft curves and the
+ripe roundness of throat and arm she made a picture wholly charming. If
+Jack was overpowered he gave no sign of it.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Miss Seldon."
+
+Her eyes rained sweet pity on him, a tenderness potent enough to disturb
+the serenity of any young man not in armor.
+
+"We--we've been so worried about you."
+
+He laughed, genially and without resentment. "Awfully good of you.
+Shall I ring for the waiter?"
+
+India rose. "I'm going riding with Ned and Moya," she explained.
+
+Alone with the Westerner, Joyce felt her blood begin to quicken.
+
+"Are you quite ... recovered?" she asked.
+
+Their eyes met. In his there was a faint cynical smile of amusement.
+
+"Quite."
+
+She understood the double meaning in his words. Her lashes fell to the
+soft cheeks, then lifted again. "I thought perhaps there might be ...
+that you might still be...."
+
+He shook his head vigorously. "It was only a dream. I can laugh at it
+now--and at myself for taking it seriously."
+
+Joyce bit her lip with vexation. There was something not quite decent in
+so prompt a recovery from her charms. He did not appear to hold even any
+resentment.
+
+Nor did he. Kilmeny had been brought too near the grim realities to hold
+any petty pique. He found this young woman still charming, but his
+admiration was tinctured with amusement. No longer did his imagination
+play upon her personality. He focused it upon the girl who had fought
+for his life against the ridicule and the suspicions of her friends. It
+was impossible for him to escape the allure of her fine sweet courage
+so gallantly expressed in every look and motion.
+
+But Moya let him severely alone. Her pride was suffering because she had
+showed to all her little world too keen an interest in him. In her
+anxiety to repudiate any claim he might think she felt she had upon him
+the girl was scornfully indifferent to his advances. Almost rudely she
+rejected his gratitude.
+
+"The man does not owe me anything. Can't he see that honors are easy?"
+she said impatiently to Lady Farquhar.
+
+Jack Kilmeny was no quitter. He set that lean jaw of his and would not
+accept repulse. In four days now the Farquhar party was going to leave
+Goldbanks and he made the most of his time.
+
+Moya never saw him coming toward her without having her pulses stirred,
+but her look met his always quietly and steadily. Not once did she give
+him a chance to see her alone. Even Lady Farquhar, who had been a severe
+critic of her vagaries, commended now her discretion. Jack rebelled
+against it in vain. He could not find a chance to speak. It was
+characteristic of him that he made one.
+
+By shrewd maneuvering he arranged an expedition to the Silent Sam mine.
+The property itself was of no particular interest. The attractive
+feature was a descent in ore buckets from the shaft-house, perched far
+up on the edge of a precipitous cliff, to the mill in the valley below.
+This was made by means of heavy cables to which the buckets were
+suspended. After Jack had explained how the men rode back and forth by
+this means between the mill and the mine India was seized with the
+inspiration he had hoped for.
+
+"Let's go down in the buckets, dear people."
+
+Lady Farquhar protested and was overruled by a chorus of votes. The
+miner assured her that it was entirely safe. Reluctantly she gave
+permission for her flock to make the trip if they desired.
+
+They rode on horseback to the mill. Jack paired with India, making no
+attempt to ride beside Moya, who brought up the rear with the captain.
+The Westerner, answering the questions of his cousin, was at his
+debonair best. Occasionally there drifted back to the couple in the rear
+fragmentary snatches of his talk. He was telling of the time he had been
+a mule skinner in New Mexico, of how he had ridden mail near Deming, and
+of frontier days at Tombstone. Casual anecdotes were sprinkled through
+his explanations to liven them. He spoke in the slurring drawl of the
+Southwest, which went so well with the brown lean face beneath the
+pinched-in felt hat and the well-packed vigor of the man.
+
+"And what is 'bucking a sample'?" India wanted to know after one of his
+stories.
+
+"You just pound some rock up and mix it to get a sample. Once when I was
+drag-driver of a herd in a round-up...."
+
+Moya heard no more. She turned her attention resolutely to her companion
+and tried to detach her mind from the man in front. She might as well
+have tried to keep her heart from beating.
+
+After they had arrived at the mill Jack quietly took charge of the
+disposition of the party. Verinder and Joyce were sent up in the first
+bucket. When this was halfway up to the mine the cable stopped to let
+another couple enter a bucket. Joyce, fifty feet up in the air, waved
+her hand to those below.
+
+"You next, India," ordered her cousin.
+
+The young woman stepped into the bucket. "I'm 'fraid," she announced
+promptly.
+
+"No need to be. Captain, your turn."
+
+The eyes of the two men met. Ned Kilmeny guessed instantly that the
+other had arranged this so as to get a few minutes alone with Moya. He
+took a place beside his sister immediately.
+
+The cable did not stop again until the second pair of passengers had
+reached the mine.
+
+Moya, followed by Jack, stepped into the basket, which began to rise
+steadily as it moved across the valley.
+
+Kilmeny did not lose a minute.
+
+"Why don't you let me see you alone? Why do you run away from me?" he
+demanded.
+
+Little patches of color burned beneath the shadows of her eyes. A sound
+as of a distant surf began to beat in her ears.
+
+"What nonsense! Why should I run from you?" she asked, meeting with
+difficulty the attack of his masterful gaze.
+
+"Because you're afraid to let me tell you that I love you," he charged.
+
+"Thought it was Joyce you ... fancied," she retorted quietly, her pulse
+hammering.
+
+"So it was. I fancied her. I love you. I'm asking you to marry me."
+
+"You don't have to ask me to marry you because you exaggerate the
+service I did you."
+
+"I ask you because I love you."
+
+"Thank you very much for the compliment. Sorry I must decline." She did
+not dare look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the mill far below.
+
+"Why must you--since you love me?"
+
+The telltale pink stained her cheeks. "You take that for granted, do
+you?"
+
+"It's true, I believe. How can I make love to you as other men do? Lady
+Farquhar won't let me see you alone--even if you were willing to give me
+a chance. In two days you are going out of my life. I must speak the
+truth ... bluntly. I love you. It has been that way with me ever since
+you came into my life again, little Moya. But I was blind and didn't see
+it till ... till I was alone in the mine with death."
+
+"I ... am sorry."
+
+"That is not enough. I'm going to have the truth. You saved my life.
+What for? It is yours ... if you will take it."
+
+She looked straight at him. "I can't marry you."
+
+"Why can't you? Can you say that you don't love me?"
+
+In the full-charged silence that followed a stifling emotion raced
+through her blood. The excitement in her set a pulse beating in her
+throat. Womanlike, she evaded the issue.
+
+"The cable has stopped. What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing has happened. It has stopped because I arranged with the
+engineer at the hoist to have it stop. When I give the signal it will
+start again."
+
+"But...."
+
+He brushed aside her futile protest. "I'm going to have this out with
+you. Dare you tell me that you don't love me, Moya?"
+
+He forced her to meet his eyes, and in that moment she felt weak and
+faint. The throb of passion beat tumultuously against her will.
+
+"Please ... be generous. What will they think? Let us start," she
+begged.
+
+"They will think something is wrong with the machinery. But it doesn't
+matter in the least what they think. It's my last chance, and I'll not
+give it up. You've got to answer me."
+
+The point where the bucket had stopped was a hundred feet above the
+ground below. She looked down, and shuddered.
+
+"It's so far down ... please."
+
+"Then don't look down. Look at me, Moya. It won't take you a moment to
+answer me."
+
+"I have. I said I couldn't marry you."
+
+"Tell me that you don't love me and I'll give the signal."
+
+"I ... don't."
+
+"Look straight at me and say it."
+
+She tried to look at him and repeat it, but her eyes betrayed the secret
+she was fighting to keep from him. The long lashes fell to the hot
+cheeks an instant too late.
+
+His hand found hers. "My little Irish wild rose, all sweetness and
+thorns," he murmured.
+
+Above the tumult of her heart she heard her voice say, as if it were
+that of a stranger, "It's no use ... I can't ... marry you."
+
+"Because I'm a highgrader?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Do you think I'm worse than other men? Down in the bottom of your heart
+do you believe that?"
+
+She smiled wanly. "Other men are not ... making love to me."
+
+"Am I nothing but a thief to you?"
+
+"I have told you that you are the man I ... love. Isn't that a good
+deal?"
+
+The desire of her, pure as a flame, swept through him. "It's the
+greatest thing that ever came into my life. Do you think I'm going to
+let it end there? I'm going to fight for our happiness. I'm going to
+beat down the things that come between us."
+
+"You can't. It's too late," she cried wistfully.
+
+"It's never too late for love so long as we're both alive."
+
+"Not for love, but...."
+
+"You've got to see this as I see it, sweetheart. I'm a man--primitive,
+if you like. I've done wild and evil things--plenty of them. What of
+that? I slough them off and trample them down. The heart of me is clean,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+To look at him was enough to clear away all doubt. He had the faults
+that go with full-blooded elemental life, but at bottom this virile
+American was sound.
+
+"Well! Isn't that enough?"
+
+The little movement of her hands toward him seemed to beg for pity.
+"Jack! I can't help it. Maybe I'm a little prig, but ... mustn't we
+guide our lives by principle and not by impulse?"
+
+"Do I guide mine by impulse?"
+
+"Don't you?" She hurried on to contradict, or at least to modify, her
+reluctant charge. "Oh, I know you are a great influence here. You're
+known all over the state. Men follow you wherever you lead. Why should I
+criticize you--I, who have done nothing all my life but lean on others?"
+
+"Go ahead. When I ask you to marry me I invite your criticism."
+
+"I have to take little steps and to keep in well-worn paths. I can't
+make laws for myself as you do. Those that have been made may be wrong,
+but I must obey them."
+
+"Why? Why should you? If they're wrong, fight against them."
+
+"I can't argue with you ... dear. But I know what I think right. I
+_want_ to think as you do. Oh, you don't know how I long to throw my
+Puritan conscience overboard and just trust your judgment. I ... admire
+you tremendously. But I can't give in ... I can't."
+
+The muscles stood out on his lean cheeks as he set his teeth. "You've
+got to, Moya. Our love has been foreordained. Do you think it is for
+nothing that we met again after all these years? You're mine--the one
+woman in the world I want and am going to have."
+
+She shook her head sadly. "No ... no!"
+
+"Is it the money I have made highgrading? Is that what stands between
+us? If I were able to come to you without a dollar but with clean
+hands--would you marry me then?"
+
+He leaned toward her, eager, ardent, passionate, the color in his cheeks
+burning to a dull brick tint beneath the tan. Body and soul she swayed
+toward him. All her vital love of life, of things beautiful and good and
+true, fused in a crescendo of emotion.
+
+"My dear ... my dear, I'm only a girl--and I love you." Somehow her
+hands were buried in the strong grip of his. "But ... I can't live on
+the profits of what I think is wrong. If it weren't for that ... Jack,
+I'd marry you if you were a pauper--and thank God for the chance."
+
+He faced her doggedly. "I'm not a pauper. I've fought for my share of
+the spoils. You've been brought up in a hot-house. Out in the world a
+man wins because he's strong. Do you think it's all been play with me?
+By God, no! I've ridden night herd in a blizzard when the temperature
+was below zero. I've done my shift on the twelfth level of the Never
+Quit many a month. I've mushed in Alaska and fought against Castro in
+Venezuela. Do you think I'm going to give up my stake now I've won it at
+last?"
+
+She looked at him tremulously. "I don't ask you to give it up. You'll
+have to decide that for yourself."
+
+"Don't you see I _can't_ give it up? If I do, I lose you. How can I take
+care of you without money?"
+
+"I'd do my best, Jack."
+
+"You don't understand. It would be for years--until I had made another
+start. I wouldn't let you give up everything unless I had something to
+offer. I wouldn't consider it."
+
+"Isn't that putting pride before love, Jack? You know I have a little
+money of my own. We could live--in very decent poverty. I would love to
+feel that we were fighting ... together. We both know you'll win in the
+end. Wouldn't it be fine to work out your success in partnership? Dear,
+I'd _rather_ marry you while you're still a poor man."
+
+For a moment the vision of it tempted him, but he put the dream away.
+"No. It won't do. Of course I'm going to win out in the end, but it
+might take a dozen years to set me on Easy street. For a woman brought
+up as you have been poverty is hell."
+
+"Then you think I'm only a doll," she flashed. "You want to put me back
+in that hot-house you mentioned. I'm just an ornament to dress up and
+look at and play with."
+
+"I think you're a little tinder-box," he said, smiling ruefully.
+
+"Don't you see how it is with me, Jack? I've always craved life. I've
+wanted to take hold of it with both hands and without gloves. But they
+would never let me. I've got my chance now ... if you really love me
+more than you do your pride and your money. I want to live close to the
+people--as you do."
+
+"What did that suit cost you?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Don't remember. Twenty-five pounds, maybe. Why?"
+
+"One hundred twenty dollars, say. And you need dozens of dresses in a
+season. I'll make a guess that it takes five thousand a year to clothe
+you. That is nearly twice as much as I'll earn altogether next year if I
+throw away my stake."
+
+She waved his argument aside. "Stupid boy! I have dresses enough to last
+me for five years--if you'll let me be that poor man's wife. I can make
+them over myself later and still be the best dressed woman in camp."
+
+From above came Captain Kilmeny's shout. "We telephoned down. The
+engineer has the trouble arranged."
+
+The cable began to move.
+
+"When shall I see you alone again, Moya?" Jack demanded.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I'm going to see you. We've got to fight this out. I'll not let Lady
+Farquhar keep me from seeing you alone. It's serious business."
+
+"Yes," she admitted. "I'll tell Lady Jim. But ... there's no use in
+letting you think I'll give up. I can't."
+
+"You've got to give up. That's all there is to it." His jaw was set like
+a vise.
+
+The party above fell upon them as they landed.
+
+"Were you frightened, Moya?" exclaimed Joyce above the chorus of
+questions.
+
+"Just for a moment." Moya did not look at Jack. "Mr. Kilmeny told me it
+would be all right."
+
+Jack's eyes danced. "I told her we would work out of the difficulty if
+she would trust me."
+
+Moya blushed. It happened that Captain Kilmeny was looking directly at
+her when his cousin spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+HOMING HEARTS
+
+
+Jack Kilmeny had not been brought up in the dry sunbaked West for
+nothing. The winds of the Rockies had entered into his character as well
+as into his physique. He was a willful man, with a good deal of granite
+in his make-up. A fighter from his youth, he did not find it easy to
+yield the point upon which he differed from Moya. There was in her so
+much of impulsive generosity that he had expected to overpower her
+scruples. But she stood like a rock planted in the soil.
+
+It came to him as he walked home after a long fight with her that in his
+heart he did not want her to yield. She was the Moya Dwight he loved
+because she would not compromise with her conviction. Yet, though he
+wanted her to stand firm, he hated the thought of giving way himself. It
+galled his pride that he must come to her without a penny, knowing that
+she had the means to keep them both modestly. Nor could he, without a
+pang, think of surrendering the twenty-eight thousand dollars he had
+fought for and won. He was no visionary. The value of money he
+understood perfectly. It stood for power, place, honor, the things that
+were worth having. Given what he had, Jack knew he could double it in
+Goldbanks within the year. There were legitimate opportunities for
+investment that were bound to make rich returns. But without a dollar he
+would be like Samson shorn of his locks.
+
+All through the night he was joined in battle with himself, but when at
+early dawn he stood on the top of Son-of-a-Gun hill and faced a sky
+faintly pink with the warning of a coming sun his decision had been
+made.
+
+On his way back he met Moya and Miss Seldon. Joyce pounced upon him with
+a grievance.
+
+"You haven't told me yet how much you're going to give for the new
+hospital, Mr. Kilmeny. You know we're leaving to-morrow, and you'll have
+to decide at once. Be generous, please. You said yourself it was a good
+cause."
+
+He nodded agreement. "The most worthy charity I know. I've often
+wondered why some Andrew Carnegie didn't set the fashion of endowing
+hospitals by wholesale. They ought to be free to all poor folks out of
+health. When a man is losing his wages and his family is scrimping he
+ought not to be facing a thirty-dollar-a-week hospital charge. Yes, I'm
+for the new hospital, Miss Seldon."
+
+"How strong are you for it?" Joyce asked, laughing at her newly acquired
+American slang. "Mr. Verinder has promised to give me two dollars for
+every one I can raise among my other friends. So don't be a--a----"
+
+"A tightwad," supplied Moya with a smile. She could do a little in the
+native slang herself.
+
+Jack went into his pocket for a checkbook and a fountain pen. He wrote
+for a few seconds, tore the check from the stub, and handed it to Joyce.
+
+That young woman gasped.
+
+"Why--you don't really mean--it's for twenty-eight thousand two hundred
+and fourteen dollars," she cried.
+
+"And seventeen cents. Please don't forget that," he added.
+
+"But--what on earth do you mean?"
+
+Jack was looking at Moya, and she at him with shining eyes in which joy
+swam.
+
+"It's a little thank offering, Miss Seldon."
+
+"Because you were rescued from the mine, I suppose. Still...."
+
+"Because I'm engaged to be married to the best woman in the world," he
+corrected.
+
+Joyce whirled upon Moya with instant divination. "You little wretch, and
+you never told me."
+
+If Miss Dwight had not known it herself till this moment she gave no
+sign to that effect. "We're telling you now, dear," she explained.
+
+"How long have you been engaged? Was it yesterday in the bucket?"
+
+Jack laughed. "Nothing so romantic. We've been engaged a little less
+than half a minute. You get the first chance to wish Moya joy on having
+won so great a catch. She's marrying a pauper, you know."
+
+"I think we're very rich," differed his sweetheart shyly.
+
+Joyce looked from one to the other suspiciously. "I haven't a notion
+what either of you mean, but I know I'm going to hang on to this check,
+Mr. Millionaire Pauper."
+
+Imps of mischief sparkled in the highgrader's eyes. "Don't forget that
+Verinder has to write one for twice as much."
+
+Miss Seldon could not help laughing. "I'll see to that. He's not a
+welcher, but ... I wonder how he'll look when I tell him."
+
+"You ought to tell him as soon as you can," Jack hinted boldly.
+
+"Oh, ought I? Did you say you had been engaged less than a minute, Mr.
+Kilmeny? How much will you give me to go down now and tell him?"
+
+"I've nothing left to give--except my gratitude."
+
+"You're the first man who ever was so ungallant as to tell me he would
+be grateful to have me leave him."
+
+"I'm the first who ever proposed to another girl in your presence. The
+circumstance is unusual," he flung back gayly.
+
+"I didn't hear you propose. All you did was to announce it," she replied
+saucily.
+
+"That's true too," admitted Kilmeny. "Well, I'm going to propose now if
+it isn't too late. You may stay if you like."
+
+"Thanks, no." Joyce kissed her friend. "I hope you'll be very happy,
+dear. I ... I believe you will."
+
+Moya choked on her words. "I know I shall, Joy."
+
+Miss Seldon looked at Jack with an expression in which embarrassment and
+audacity were blended. "I've always rather liked your pauper," she
+confided aloud to Moya.
+
+Her confidences had their limits. She omitted to mention what had just
+popped into her mind, that within the fortnight he had proposed to her
+too on the same spot.
+
+Jack bowed with exaggerated deference when she shook hands with him. He
+was just now riding the seventh wave of happiness and felt friendly to
+the whole world.
+
+"Thanks very much. You're a good scout, Joyce."
+
+"Good gracious! What may that be? Some more of your American slang, I
+suppose." She broke away from persiflage to add seriously: "You're
+right about one thing, though. You've got the best girl in the world. Be
+good to her, Jack Kilmeny."
+
+With that she turned and walked down the hill.
+
+The other two walked up.
+
+"I'm so proud of you, Jack, boy," whispered one of them.
+
+He laughed happily. "I'm proud of myself. I've done the best day's work
+I ever did for myself when I won Moya Dwight."
+
+"You know what I mean, Jack. What other man would have thrown away a
+small fortune--all he had--just for me?"
+
+"I can name one other," suggested Kilmeny.
+
+"Ned! But he's a saint."
+
+"And I'm a sinner," her lover replied blithely.
+
+"You're the sinner I love, then."
+
+They had reached a clump of firs. Without knowing how it happened she
+found herself in his arms. There were both tears and laughter in her
+eyes as her lips turned slowly to meet his.
+
+"The first time since we were kiddies on the _Victorian_, sweetheart,"
+he told her.
+
+"Yes, it's true. I loved you then. I love you now.... Jack, boy, I'm
+just the happiest girl alive."
+
+A mist-like veil of old rose hung above the mountain tops. Hand in hand
+they watched the rising sun pierce through it and flood the crotches of
+the hills with God's splendid canvases. It was a part of love's egoism
+that all this glory of the young day seemed an accompaniment to the song
+of joy that pulsed through them.
+
+Later they came to earth and babbled the nonsense that is the highest
+wisdom of lovers. They built air castles and lived in them, seeing life
+through a poetic ambient as a long summer day in which they should ride
+and work and play together.
+
+At last she remembered Lady Farquhar and began to laugh.
+
+"We must go down and tell her at once, Jack."
+
+He agreed. "Yes, let's go back and have it out. If you like you may go
+to your room and I'll tackle her alone."
+
+"I'd rather go with you."
+
+He delighted in her answer.
+
+Farquhar was taking an early morning stroll, arm in arm with Lady Jim,
+when he caught sight of them.
+
+"Look, Di!"
+
+Both of the lovers knew how to walk. Lady Farquhar, watching them,
+thought she had never seen as fine a pair of untamed human beings. In
+his step was the fine free swing of the hillman, and the young woman
+breasted the slope lightly as a faun.
+
+The Englishman chuckled. "You're beaten, Di. The highwayman wins."
+
+"Nonsense," she retorted sharply, but with anxiety manifest in her
+frown.
+
+"Fact, just the same. He's coming to tell us he means to take our little
+girl to his robber den."
+
+"I believe you'd actually let him," she said scornfully.
+
+"Even you can't stop him. It's written in the books. Not sure I'd
+interfere if I could. For a middle-aged Pharisee with the gout I'm
+incurably romantic. It's the child's one great chance for happiness. But
+I wish to the deuce he wasn't a highgrader."
+
+"She shan't sacrifice herself if I can prevent it," Lady Farquhar
+insisted stanchly.
+
+"I 'member a girl who sacrificed herself for a line lieutenant without a
+shilling to call his own," he soliloquized aloud. "Would have him, and
+did, by Jove! Three deaths made him Lord Farquhar later, but she married
+the penniless subaltern."
+
+"I've always been glad I did." She squeezed his arm fondly. "But this is
+different, James."
+
+Kilmeny and Moya stopped. The young man doffed his gray felt hat and
+bowed.
+
+"Mornin', Lady Farquhar--Lord Farquhar. We've come to ask your
+permission for our marriage."
+
+"Mornin', rebels. Fancy I'll have to refuse it," cut back Farquhar, eyes
+twinkling. For this bold directness pleased and amused him.
+
+"That would distress us extremely," answered Kilmeny with a genial
+smile.
+
+"But would not affect your plans, I understand you to mean."
+
+"You catch the idea exactly, sir."
+
+Lady Farquhar entered the conversation. "Are you planning to go to
+prison with him, Moya, when he is convicted of highgrading?" she asked
+pleasantly.
+
+Moya told in three sentences of what her lover had done. The Englishman
+wrung Kilmeny's hand cordially.
+
+"By Jove, you reform thoroughly when you go about it. Don't think I'd
+have enjoyed writing that check for Miss Joyce. Leaves you strapped,
+does it?"
+
+"Dead broke," came the very cheerful reply.
+
+"But of course Moya has some money," said Lady Farquhar quietly.
+
+The Westerner winced. "Wish she hadn't. It's the only thing I have to
+forgive her."
+
+Farquhar lifted his eyebrows. "Di," he remonstrated.
+
+His wife came to time with a frank apology. "That was downright nasty of
+me, Mr. Kilmeny. I withdraw it. None the less, I think Moya would be
+throwing herself away. Do you realize what you are proposing? She's been
+used to the best ever since she was born. Have you the means to supply
+her needs? Or are you considering a Phyllida and Corydon idyll in a
+cottage?"
+
+"It will have to be something of that sort at first. I've told her all
+this too, Lady Farquhar."
+
+"What does that matter if we love each other?" Moya asked.
+
+"You'll find it matters a good deal," said Lady Jim dryly. "When poverty
+comes in love is likely to wink out any day. Of course I realize that
+yours is of a quality quite unusual. It always is, my dear. Every lover
+has thought that since time began."
+
+"We'll have to take our fighting chance of that," Jack replied.
+
+Moya, her eyes shining, nodded agreement. No great gain can be won
+without risk. She knew there was a chance that she might not find
+happiness in her love. But where it called her she must follow--to a
+larger life certainly, to joy and to sorrow, to the fuller experiences
+that must come to every woman who fulfills her destiny.
+
+A voice hailed Jack. Colter was hurrying up the street, plainly excited.
+Kilmeny moved a few steps toward him.
+
+Lady Jim took advantage of his absence to attack Moya from another
+angle. "My dear, I wish I could show you how much depends on a
+similarity of tastes, of habits, of standards. Matrimony means more than
+love. It means adjustment."
+
+"I've thought of that too. But ... when you love enough that doesn't
+help the adjustment?" asked the girl naively.
+
+She had appealed to Farquhar. That gentleman came to her assistance. "It
+does."
+
+"This isn't a matter to be decided merely by personal preference," urged
+the older woman. "There may be--consequences."
+
+The color beat into the face of the young woman in a wave, but her eyes
+held steadily to those of Lady Farquhar.
+
+"I ... hope so."
+
+"Bravo, Moya!" applauded her guardian, clapping his hands softly.
+
+"Don't you think they--the consequences--deserve a better chance than
+you will give them?"
+
+"I'll answer that, Di," spoke up Farquhar. "When a girl chooses for the
+father of her children a man who is clean and strong and virile, and on
+top of that her lover, she is giving them the best possible chance in
+life."
+
+Moya's gratitude shone through the eyes that met those of her guardian.
+
+Kilmeny swung back to the group he had left. "I've good news, friends.
+This is my lucky day. You remember that when I was rescued from the
+Golden Nugget my pockets were full of ore samples I had picked up as I
+was tunneling."
+
+"Yes ... picked them up while you were delirious, didn't you?" Farquhar
+replied.
+
+"Must have, I reckon. Well, you know how miners are always having pieces
+of quartz assayed. Colter took these to the man we employ. He's just
+learned that it is high-grade stuff."
+
+"You've made a strike?"
+
+"Looks like it. Colter wasn't taking any chances, anyhow. He hiked right
+around to the owners of the mine and signed up a five-year lease in his
+name and mine."
+
+Farquhar shook hands with him cordially. "Hope you make a fortune,
+Kilmeny."
+
+Moya's chaperon, facing the inevitable, capitulated as graceful as she
+could. After all, the girl might have done worse. The man she had chosen
+was well born, good looking, forceful, and a leader in his community. If
+this fortunate strike was going to leave him well off, clearly she must
+make the best of him.
+
+"You're a lucky man. I hope you know you don't deserve a girl like
+Moya," she told him as she shook hands.
+
+"I know it, all right. Can you tell me who does?" he flung back, with a
+gay insouciant smile.
+
+At that moment Ned Kilmeny stepped out upon the hotel porch. Lady Jim
+nodded toward him.
+
+"Perhaps," his cousin conceded. "But in this little old world a man
+doesn't get what he deserves."
+
+"I see he doesn't. Ned is a better man than you."
+
+"Yes," he admitted.
+
+Captain Kilmeny, coming down the porch steps, saw in a flash what had
+happened. He came forward with the even stride and impassive face that
+seldom deserted him. In two sentences Lady Farquhar told him the facts.
+
+"You lucky dog," he said to his cousin as their hands gripped.
+
+Jack had never liked him better than in this moment when he was giving
+up so cheerfully the thing he wanted most in the world.
+
+"It isn't always the best man that wins, captain. I take off my hat to
+the better men who have tried and failed. Perhaps it may be a comfort to
+them to know that I'm the man that needs her most."
+
+The captain turned to Moya. "So you've found that good hunting already,"
+he said to her in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, I think I have ... I'm sure of it, Ned." Her eyes were full of
+tender sympathy for him. She wished she could tell him how much she
+admired his fine spirit.
+
+"God keep you happy," he said wistfully.
+
+Jack joined them and slipped Moya's arm into his. "Amen to that,
+captain. And since Jack Kilmeny has been appointed deputy on the job I'm
+going to see your wish comes true."
+
+Moya looked at her lover and smiled.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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+_12 mo. Cloth bound, $1.00 Net._
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+
+KATHERINE'S SHEAVES
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+
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+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Highgrader, by William MacLeod Raine
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