through it with
the food untouched before her. Wiley's insinuations against Kearn
Thode she had dismissed utterly from her thoughts, but his renewed
taunt of the morning filled her in spite of herself with dread
foreboding. Could fate have indeed been playing with her after all,
and was it possible that Wiley held within his hands the strings of her
future destiny?

She was Willa Murdaugh, of course. Mason North and the Halsteads had
satisfied themselves of that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But what if
Wiley had really stumbled upon some facts unknown to them all which
might throw a shadow across her title? Was it an idle threat to coerce
her or a very tangible menace?

She raised troubled eyes to meet Kearn Thode's smiling ones across the
table and her native courage came back in a swift rush. Surely she had
nothing to fear; she would meet Wiley and beat him at his own game, and
then . . . she smiled again into Thode's eyes. What did anything else
matter, now that he had returned?

An informal dance was the order of the evening and Willa and the young
engineer gravitated to a seat on the stairs after a romping fox-trot.
Both were flushed and sparkling, but when they found themselves alone
together a diffident silence fell upon them.

"It must seem good to you to get back," Willa ventured at last when the
pause had become oppressive.

"It is." His glance rested upon her with a world of contentment. "I
can't begin to tell you how wonderful it seems!"

"And your work down there?" she pursued hurriedly. "You have finished
it? You will not have to return again?"

The contentment faded and in its place there came a look of bitterness
and dogged determination.

"It has scarcely begun. I wonder if you ever heard an old legend
around Limasito concerning the lost location of a marvelous oil well?"

Willa laughed nervously, a little taken aback by the abruptness of the
question.

"One hears so many legends in every country of lost or buried or hidden
treasure," she parried. "Scarcely anyone pays attention to them except
the tenderfoots. You know up in the mining country one is forever
hearing such tales of vast deposits of ore, but nobody can ever find
the lead."

"This particular one concerns a well in a mysterious pool of water
where a massacre is supposed to have taken place. It dates back to the
time of the Spaniards' coming."

He paused, but Willa said nothing. She was striving to mask her
th