lie I told my mother, so that I could come to the
dance with the Kennedys. Set me down here anywhere, Lance Lorrigan,
and let me walk until the Kennedys overtake me! They'll be coming
soon, now--as soon as Bill Kennedy gets licket sober. You can stop the
horses--surely you can stop them and let me out. But please, _please_
do not take me home to-night, in this party dress--and a coat that
isna mine at all!"

"I'm not taking you home, girl. I'm taking you to Jumpoff. And it
won't matter to you whether Bill Kennedy is licked sober or not. And
to-morrow I'll find out who owns the coat. I'll say I found it on the
road somewhere. Who's to prove I didn't? Or if you disapprove of lying
about it, I'll bring it back and leave it beside the road."

"It's a lot of trouble I'm making for you," said Mary Hope quite
meekly, and let go his arm. "I should not have told the lie and gone
to the dance. And I canna wear my own coat home, because it's there
in the pile behind the door, and some one else will take it. So after
all it will be known that I lied, and you may as well take me home now
and let me face it."

To this Lance made no reply. But when the pintos came rattling down
the hill to where the Douglas trail led away to the right, he did not
slow them, did not take the turn.

Mary Hope looked anxiously toward home, away beyond the broken
skyline. A star hung big and bright on the point of a certain hill
that marked the Douglas ranch. While she watched it, the star slid out
of sight as if it were going down to warn Hugh Douglas that his
daughter had told a lie and had gone to a forbidden place to dance
with forbidden people, and was even now driving through the night with
one of the Lorrigans,--perchance the wickedest of all the wicked
Lorrigans, because he had been away beyond the Rim and had learned the
wickedness of the cities.

She looked wistfully at the face of this wickedest of the Lorrigans,
his profile seen dimly in the starlight. He did not look wicked. Under
his hat brim she could see his brows, heavy and straight and lifted
whimsically at the inner points, as though he were thinking of
something amusing. His nose was fine and straight, too,--not at all
like a beak, though her father had always maintained that the
Lorrigans were but human vultures. His mouth,--there was something in
the look of his mouth that made her catch her breath; something
tender, something that vaguely disturbed her, made her feel that it