very idea away from me. Laura is good to me and her friendliness is
genuine. Little as I know, I _know_ that much. And York--oh, that was a
village gossip's tale! And she gets me scared--I, whom even Jerusha
Darby never cowed."

The poison was working, after all, and Stellar Bahrr's sting had not
been against marble, nor into water. With the memory of Jerusha Darby,
too, the burden came again to her niece's mind, only to be lifted again,
however, in a few minutes. Her memory had run back to her day down the
river and the oak-grove and the sand, and the young man whose name was
Joe Thomson--Jerry did not remember the name--and the crushing weight of
surprise and disappointment. The struggle to decide on a course for
herself immediately was rising again within her, when she saw a young
man turn from the street and come up the walk toward the porch.

"I can't have leisure to settle anything by myself, it seems, even with
the lord and lady of the castle leaving me in full seclusion here. One
caller goes and another comes. I wonder what excuse this one has for
intruding. He is another type--one I haven't met before."

In the time required for this caller to reach the porch there flashed
through Jerry's mind all the types she had seen in the West. Ponk and
Thelma and fuzzy Teddy, the woman-and-baby, Laura and York, and that
pin-eyed gossip--and the young country fellow whose land lay next to
hers. None of them concerned her, really, except these hospitable
friends who were sheltering her, and, in a way, in an upright, legal,
Jim Swaim kind of way, the young man down the Sage Brush, losing in the
game like herself and helpless like herself.

It was no wonder that Jerry did not recognize in this caller the
ranchman of the blowout. There was nothing of the clodhopper in this
well-dressed young fellow, although he was not exactly a model for
advertising high-grade tailoring.

"Is this Miss Swaim?" he asked, lifting his hat. "I am Joe Thomson. You
may remember that we met down in the blowout two weeks ago."

"I could hardly forget meeting you. Will you sit down?" Jerry offered
Joe a chair with a courtesy very unlike the blunt manner of her first
words to him a fortnight before.

But in the far recesses of her consciousness all the while the haunting,
ever-recurring picture of a handsome face and a faultlessly clad form,
even the face and form of a Philadelphia bank clerk, _ne_ artist, made
the reality of Joe Thomson's pres