ly you are too kind--or not quite brave
enough--to say so."

"Yours? Never! If I could believe you capable of such a thing--"

"You may believe it," she broke in. "It was I who suggested it."

He drew a deep breath, and she heard his teeth come together with a
click. It was enough to try the faith of the loyalest lover: it tried
his sorely. Yet he scarcely needed her low-voiced, "Don't you despise
me as I deserve, now?" to make him love her all the more.

"Indeed, I don't. Resentment and love can hardly find room in the same
heart at the same time, and I have said that I love you," he rejoined
quickly.

She went silent at that, and when she spoke again the listening
Jastrow tuned his ear afresh to lose no word.

"As I have confessed, I suggested it: it was just after I had seen
your men and the sheriff's ready to fly at one another's throats. I
was miserably afraid, and I asked Uncle Somerville if he could not
make terms with you in some other way. I didn't mean--"

He made haste to help her.

"Please don't try to defend your motive to me; it is wholly
unnecessary. It is more than enough for me to know that you were
anxious about my safety."

But she would not let him have the crumb of comfort undisputed.

"There were other lives involved besides yours. I didn't say I was
specially afraid for you, did I?"

"No, but you meant it. And I thought afterward that I should have
given you a hint in some way, though the way didn't offer at the time.
There was no danger of bloodshed. I knew--we all knew--that Deckert
wouldn't go to extremities with the small force he had."

"Then it was only a--a--"

"A bluff," he said, supplying the word. "If I had believed there was
the slightest possibility of a fight, I should have made my men take
to the woods rather than let you witness it."

"You shouldn't have let me waste my sympathy," she protested
reproachfully.

"I'm sorry; truly, I am. And you have been wasting it in another
direction as well. To-night will see the shale-slide conquered
definitely, I hope, and three more days of good weather will send us
into the Carbonate yards."

She broke in upon him with a little cry of impatient despair.

"That shows how unwary you have been! Tell me: is there not a little
valley just above here--an open place where your railroad and Uncle
Somerville's run side by side?"

"Yes, it is a mile this side of the canyon head. What about it?"

"How long is it since you have bee