ires
of faith in her eyes to greet him.

CHAPTER XII

THE OTHER MAN

Dr. Slavens stood at the door of the parlor to meet her as she came
toward him, a little tremor of weakness in her limbs, a subconscious
confession of mastery which the active feminine mind might have denied
with blushing show of indignation.

The clothiers of Meander had fitted Slavens out with a very good serge
suit. Tan oxfords replaced his old battered shoes. A physician had
dressed the cut on his forehead, where adhesive plaster, neatly holding
gauze over the cut, took away the aspect of grimness and gravity which
the bloody bandage of the morning had imparted. For all his hard fight,
he was quite a freshened-up man; but there was a questioning hesitation
in his manner as he offered his hand.

Her greeting removed whatever doubt that William Bentley's assurance of
her fidelity might have left. She took his hand between both her own and
held it so a little while, looking into his eyes without the reservation
of suspicion or distrust.

"We believed you'd come in time all along," said she.

"You believed it," he replied softly, not the faintest light of a smile
on his serious face; "and I cannot weigh my gratitude in words. There is
an explanation to be made, and I have saved it for you. I'm a beast to
think of food just now, perhaps, but I haven't eaten anything since
yesterday evening."

"You can tell me afterward, if you wish," she said.

Through the meal they talked of the others, of who had come to Meander,
who had gone home; of June and her mother and the miller's wife. Nothing
was said of the cause of his absence nor of his spectacular arrival just
in the second remaining to him to save his chance.

"I noticed a road running up toward the mountain," said he when they had
finished. "Shall we walk up that way?"

Out past the little cultivated gardens, where stunted corn was growing
in the futile hope that it might come to ear, they followed the road
which led into the mountain gorge. A rod-wide stream came plunging down
beside the way, bursting its current upon a thousand stones here and
there, falling into green pools in which the trout that breasted its
roaring torrent might find a place to pant.

Here, in an acre of valley, some remnant of glacier had melted after its
slow-plowing progress of ten million years. The smooth, round stones
which it had dropped when it vanished in the sun lay there as thickly
strewn as seed