"You look so very
strange. Why you glare at me wiz ze eye? Why you keep calling me
Bess-ee?"

"Are you not Bessie--my Bessie?"

"You haf ze very strange idea in your mind, saire. I nevaire saw you
before."

Berlin Carson was like one dazed and utterly bewildered. To all
appearances he had badly alarmed the girl. As he faltered in seeking
further words, she suddenly brushed past him and fled, her soft-falling
feet making no sound.

For fully three minutes Carson stood there without speaking. Finally,
with his hand on the banister, he started to descend the stairs.

"Am I deceived?" he whispered huskily. "No, by Heaven, it is she!"

CHAPTER VI.

THE FACE IN THE WATCH.

At lunch Carson was strangely silent and abstracted. The raillery of his
friends failed to awaken him into anything like liveliness. He smiled a
bit at their jokes and chaffing, but any one could see those smiles were
forced.

"I should say it was high time you got away from the wild and woolly
West!" cried Jack Diamond. "I've heard that loneliness on the ocean or
the plains makes a man gloomy, and, by Jove! I believe it's true."

"Cowboys and cattlemen are not gloomy," returned Carson. "As a rule,
they're a jovial, good-natured set, who thoroughly enjoy a joke or a bit
of humor. It's not loneliness on the plains that affects me, if there's
anything the matter with me."

"Anything the matter with you?" rumbled Browning. "Why, in the old days
you were always light-hearted. This is the first time I've ever seen a
depressed mug on you."

"Let me alone, and I presume I'll come out of it," said the young
Westerner. "I'm sorry if I'm casting a shadow on an otherwise happy
gathering. I didn't mean to."

"Oh, you're all right, Carson. I should say your liver might be out of
kilter. You need something to stir it up."

"If there's anything that will stir up a man's liver more than a
hundred-mile jaunt on horseback, I'd like to know what it is. I've been
taking plenty such jaunts this spring. Although I haven't been at the
ranch for a month, I was there when the snow came off, and rode the
range with the rest of the boys to find out how our cows had come
through the winter."

"Don't suppose you've been troubled any more by cattle thieves since the
demise of that fake Laramie Dave?" questioned Merriwell.

"No, we put an end to the business in our parts. We had you to thank for
it. You were the one who discovered how our brand of the B. S.