e many pleasant surprises for you like this."

He bent over her and whispered: "I have arranged for your pay to be
double--we are neighbors, you know--your father and I,--and a pretty
girl, like you, need not work always."

She started and looked at him quickly.

The color went from her cheeks. Then it came again in a crimson tide,
so full and rich, that Richard Travis, like Titian with his brush,
stood spellbound before the work he had done.

Fearing he had said too much, he dropped his voice and with a twinkle
in his eye said:

"For there is Harry--you know."

All her timidity vanished--her hanging of the head, her silence, her
blushes. Instead, there leaped into her eyes that light which Richard
Travis had never seen before--the light of a Conway on mettle.

"I hate him."

"I do not blame you," he said. "I shall be a--father to you if you
will let me."

He pressed her hand, and raising his hat, was gone.

As he drove away he turned and looked at her slipping across the lawn
in the twilight. In his eyes was a look of triumphant excitement.

"To own her--such a creature--God--it were worth risking my neck."

The mention of Harry brought back all her bitter recklessness to
Helen. She was but a child and her road, indeed, was hard. And as she
turned at the old gate and looked back at the vanishing buggy she
said:

"Had he asked me this evening I'd--yes--I'd go to the end of the
world with him. I'd go--go--go--and I care not how."

Richard Travis was in a jolly mood at the supper table that night,
and Harry became jolly also, impertinently so. He had not said a word
about his cousin being with Helen, but it burned in his breast, and
he awaited his chance to mention it.

"I have thought up a fable since I have been at supper, Cousin
Richard. Shall I tell you?"

"Oh"--with a cynical smile--"do!"

"Well," began Harry unabashed, and with many sly winks and much
histrionic effort, "it is called the 'Fox and the Lion.' Now a fox in
the pursuit ran down a beautiful young doe and was about to devour
her when the lion came up and with a roar and a sweep of his paw,
took her saying...."

"'Get out of the way, you whelp,'" said his cousin, carrying the
fable on, "for I perceive you are not even a fox, but a coyote, since
no fox was ever known to run down a doe."

The smile was gradually changed on his face to a cruel sneer, and
Harry ceased talking with a suddenness that was marked.

CHAPTER XVII