pretty sitting room, where he deposited it on a couch, and the girl
arranged it comfortably, that it might at last have undisturbed rest.

A man in an adjoining room heard their voices and came to the door.

"You can come out for a while, Kelly," said Saunders. "This is Miss
Rivers. She will want to see him."

A minute later the man in charge had left 'Tana alone beside Harris.

All the life in him seemed to gather in his eyes as he looked at her.

"You have come! I told him you would--I told Dan," he whispered,
excitedly. "Come close; turn up the light; I want to see you plain. Just
the same girl; but happier--a heap happier, ain't you?"

"A heap happier," she agreed.

"And I helped you about it some--about the mine, I mean. I like to think
of that, to think I made some return for the harm I done you."

"But you never did me any harm, Joe."

"Yes, I did--lots. You didn't know--but I did. That's why I wanted you to
come so bad. I wanted to square things--before I had to go."

"But you are all right, Joe. You are not going to die. You are much better
than when I saw you last."

"Because I can talk, you think so," he answered. "But I am cold to my
waist--I know what that means; and I ain't grumbling. It's all right, now
that you have come. Queer that all the time we've known each other, this
is the first time I've talked to you! 'Tana, you must let me tell Dan
Overton all--"

"All! All what?"

"Where I saw you first, and--"

"No--no, I can't do that," she said, shrinking back. "Joe, I've tried
often to think of it--of telling him, but I never could. He will have to
trust or distrust me, but I can't tell him."

"I know how you feel; but you wrong yourself. Any one would give you
credit instead of blaming you--don't you ever think of that? And
then--then, 'Tana, I tried to tell him down at the Ferry, because I
thought you were in some game against him. I managed to tell him you were
Holly's partner, but hadn't got any farther when the paralysis caught me.
I hadn't time to tell him that Holly was your father, and that he made you
go where he said; or that you dressed as a boy and was called 'Monte,'
because that disguise was the only safety possible for you in the gambling
dens where he took you. Part of it I didn't understand clearly at that
time. I didn't know you really thought he was dead, and that you tramped
alone into this region in your boy's clothes, so you could get a new start
where no white folk