ere in the hills, and paint landscape. I
caught the idea that we were to lead a sort of camp-life--that we were
to be hermits except for the companionship of our palettes and nature
and each other--and the few neighbors that one finds in the country,
and----" The speaker broke off awkwardly.

Steele laughed.

"'It is so nominated in the bond.' The cabin is over there--some
twenty miles." He pointed off across the farthest dim ridge to the
south. "It is among hills where--but to-morrow you shall see for
yourself!"

"To-morrow?" There was a touch of anxious haste in the inquiry.

"Are you so impatient?" smiled Steele.

Saxon wheeled on his host, and on his forehead were beads of
perspiration though the breeze across the hilltops was fresh with the
coming of evening. His answer broke from his lips with the abruptness
of an exclamation.

"My God, man, I'm in panic!"

The Kentuckian looked up in surprise, and his bantering smile
vanished. Evidently, he was talking with a man who was suffering some
stress of emotion, and that man was his friend.

For a moment, Saxon stood rigidly, looking away with drawn brow, then
he began with a short laugh in which there was no vestige of mirth:

"When two men meet and find themselves congenial companions," he said
slowly, "there need be no questions asked. We met in a Mexican hut."

Steele nodded.

"Then," went on Saxon, "we discovered a common love of painting. That
was enough, wasn't it?"

Steele again bowed his assent.

"Very well." The greater painter spoke with the painfully slow control
of one who has taken himself in hand, selecting tone and words to
safeguard against any betrayal into sudden outburst. "As long as it's
merely you and I, George, we know enough of each other. When it
becomes a matter of meeting your friends, your own people, you force
me to tell you something more."

"Why?" Steele demanded; almost hotly. "I don't ask my friends for
references or bonds!"

Saxon smiled, but persistently repeated:

"You met me in Mexico, seven months ago. What, in God's name, do you
know about me?"

The other looked up, surprised.

"Why, I know," he said, "I know----" Then, suddenly wondering what he
did know, he stopped, and added lamely: "I know that you are a
landscape-painter of national reputation and a damned good fellow."

"And, aside from that, nothing," came the quick response. "What I am
on the side, preacher, porch-climber, bank-robber--whatever else