"Oh, you are so mistaken. It seems that I was mistaken,
too. I never dreamed that you--nothing--nothing, that you could ever do
would make me forget what you have told me. You are right to go."

"You mean that you will not come to me?" he faltered.

"Could you really think that I would?" she retorted.

"But, Kitty, you will let me go? You will not betray me? You will give
me a chance?"

"It is the only thing that I can do," she answered coldly. "I should die
of shame, if it were ever known that I had thought of being more to you
than I have been; but you must go to-night."

And with this she left him, fairly running toward the house.

Alone in the darkness, Honorable Patches smiled mockingly to himself.

When morning came there was great excitement at the Cross-Triangle
Ranch. Patches was missing. And more, the best horse in the Dean's
outfit--the big bay with the blazed face, had also disappeared.

Quickly the news spread throughout the valley, and to the distant
ranches. And many were the wise heads that nodded understandingly; and
many were the "I told you so's." The man who had appeared among them so
mysteriously, and who, for a year, had been a never-failing topic of
conversation, had finally established his character beyond all question.
But the cattlemen felt with reason, because of the Dean's vigorous
defense of the man when they would have administered justice, that the
matter was now in his hands. They offered their services, and much
advice; they quietly joked about the price of horses; but the Dean
laughed at their jokes, listened to their advice, and said that he
thought the sheriff of Yavapai County could be trusted to handle the
case.

To Helen only Kitty told of her last interview with Patches. And Helen,
shocked and surprised at the thoroughness with which the man had brought
about Kitty's freedom and peace of mind, bade the girl forget and be
happy.

When the crisis was passed, and Phil was out of danger, Kitty returned
to her home, but every day she and Helen drove across the meadows to see
how the patient was progressing. Then one day Helen said good-by to her
Williamson Valley friends, and went with Stanford to the home he had
prepared for her. And after that Kitty spent still more of her time at
the house across the wash from the old Acton homestead.

It was during those weeks of Phil's recovery, while he was slowly
regaining his full measure of health and strength, that Kitty learned