lendid, too."

Sheldon wondered secretly who Von was, and he speculated as to whether it
was Von who two years previously had led her to believe that nothing
remained for her but matrimony.

"What part of the United States is your home?" he asked. "Chicago or
Wyoming? or somewhere out there? You know you haven't told me a thing
about yourself. All that I know is that you are Miss Joan Lackland from
anywhere."

"You'd have to go farther west to find my stamping grounds."

"Ah, let me see--Nevada?"

She shook her head.

"California?"

"Still farther west."

"It can't be, or else I've forgotten my geography."

"It's your politics," she laughed. "Don't you remember 'Annexation'?"

"The Philippines!" he cried triumphantly.

"No, Hawaii. I was born there. It is a beautiful land. My, I'm almost
homesick for it already. Not that I haven't been away. I was in New
York when the crash came. But I do think it is the sweetest spot on
earth--Hawaii, I mean."

"Then what under the sun are you doing down here in this God-forsaken
place?" he asked. "Only fools come here," he added bitterly.

"Nielsen wasn't a fool, was he?" she queried. "As I understand, he made
three millions here."

"Only too true, and that fact is responsible for my being here."

"And for me, too," she said. "Dad heard about him in the Marquesas, and
so we started. Only poor Dad didn't get here."

"He--your father--died?" he faltered.

She nodded, and her eyes grew soft and moist.

"I might as well begin at the beginning." She lifted her head with a
proud air of dismissing sadness, after, the manner of a woman qualified
to wear a Baden-Powell and a long-barrelled Colt's. "I was born at Hilo.
That's on the island of Hawaii--the biggest and best in the whole group.
I was brought up the way most girls in Hawaii are brought up. They live
in the open, and they know how to ride and swim before they know what six-
times-six is. As for me, I can't remember when I first got on a horse
nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned
cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui--big ones, for the islands. Hokuna had
two hundred thousand acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Koa and
Mauna Loa, and it was there I learned to shoot goats and wild cattle. On
Molokai they have big spotted deer. Von was the manager of Hokuna. He
had two daughters about my own age, and I always spent the hot season
there, and, once, a whole ye