he observed aloud, "I sure didn't come any too soon!"

"Oh, it's all out! I don't know how I ever shall thank you in this
world! With Phenie in bed with a sprained ankle so she couldn't walk,
and the men all gone, I was just wild! I--why--" Kate, standing upon the
stairs so that she could look into the loft, stopped suddenly and stared
at Ford with some astonishment. Plainly, she had but then discovered
that he was a stranger--and it was quite as plain that she was taking
stock of his blackened eyes and other bruises, and that with the
sheltered woman's usual tendency to exaggerate the disfigurements.

"That's all right; I don't need any thanks." Ford, seeing no other way
of escape, approached her steadily, the empty bucket swinging in his
hand. "The fire's all out, so there's nothing more I can do here, I
guess."

"Oh, but you'll have to bring Josephine back!" Kate's eyes met his
straightforward glance reluctantly, and not without reason; for Ford had
dark, greenish purple areas in the region of his eyes, a skinned cheek,
and a swollen lip; his chin was scratched and there was a bruise on his
forehead where, on the night of his marriage, he had hit the floor
violently under the impact of two or three struggling male humans.
Although they were five days old--six, some of them--these divers
battle-signs were perfectly visible, not to say conspicuous; so that
Kate Mason was perhaps justified in her perfectly apparent diffidence in
looking at him. So do we turn our eyes self-consciously away from a
cripple, lest we give offense by gazing upon his misfortune.

"_I_ can't carry her, and she can't walk--her ankle is sprained
dreadfully. So if you'll bring her back to the house, I'll be ever so
much--"

"Certainly; I'll bring her back right away." Ford came down the stairs
so swiftly that she retreated in haste before him, and once down he did
not linger; indeed, he almost ran from the house and from her
embarrassed gratitude. On the way to the bunk-house it occurred to him
that it might be no easy matter, now, for Mason to conceal Ford's
identity and his sins. From the way in which she had stared wincingly at
his battered countenance, he realized that she did, indeed, have ideals.
Ford grinned to himself, wondering if Ches didn't have to do his smoking
altogether in the bunk-house; he judged her to be just the woman to wage
a war on tobacco, and swearing, and muddy boots, and drinking out of
one's saucer, and all other w