and stole a glance now and then at Ward from under her
eyebrows.

Ward stood and looked at her until the food was all on the table. He
was breathing unnaturally, and his jaws were set hard together. When
she pushed a box up to the table and sat down upon it, and rested her
elbows on the oilcloth and looked straight at him with her chin nested
in her two palms, he drew a long breath, hunched his shoulders with
some mental surrender, and grinned wryly.

"So be it," he yielded, throwing his hat upon the bunk. "I kinda
overplayed my hand, anyway. I most humbly ask your pardon!" He bowed
farcically and took up the wash-basin from its bench just outside the
door.

"You see, William Louisa," he went on quizzically, when he had seated
himself opposite her and was helping himself to the potatoes, "when a
young lady invades strange territory, and hides behind strange doors,
and jumps out at an unsuspecting but terribly well-meaning young man,
she's apt to get a surprise. When emotions are bottled--"

"Never mind the bottled emotions. I'd like some potatoes, if you don't
want them all. I see you haven't the faintest idea how to treat a
guest. Charlie Fox would have died before he would help himself and
set down the dish away out of my reach. You could stick pins into him
till he howled, but you couldn't make him be rude to a lady."

"I'd sure like to," muttered Ward ambiguously and handed her every bit
of food within his reach.

"You can talk and eat at the same time, I see. So tell me what you've
been doing all this while." Billy Louise spoke lightly, even
flippantly, but her eyes were making love to him shyly, whether she
knew it or not.

"Working," answered Ward promptly and briefly. He was thinking at the
rate of a million thoughts a minute, it seemed to him, and he was
afraid to let go of himself and say what he thought. One thing he knew
beyond all doubt, and that was that he must be careful or he would see
his air-castle blow up in small fragments and come down a hopeless
ruin. He needed time to think, and Billy Louise was not giving him
even a minute. So he clutched at two decisions which instinct told him
might help him win to safety: He would not make love, and he would not
tell Billy Louise about the gold.

"Working! Well, so have I. But working at what? Did you hire out to
Junkins again? I thought you said you wouldn't till fall." Billy
Louise was watching Ward rather closely, perhaps to