d the girl's fair face. He was wondering
what was yet to come. He was wondering how this interview was to bear
on the future. In spite of his easy manner he dreaded lest the threats
of Mrs. Ransford were about to be put into execution.

Joan accepted his explanation.

"I see," she said. Then, after a pause: "Then who are you?"

"Me? Oh, I'm 'Buck,'" he responded, with a short laugh.

"Buck--who?"

"Jest plain 'Buck.'" Again came that short laugh.

"Mr. Kenyon's son?"

The man shook his head, and Joan tried again.

"His nephew?"

Again came that definite shake. Joan persisted, but with growing
impatience.

"Perhaps you're--his partner?" she said, feeling that if he again
shook his head she must inevitably shake him.

But she was spared a further trial. Buck had been quick to realize
her disappointment. Nor had he any desire to inspire her anger. On the
contrary, his one thought was to please and help her.

"You see we're not related. Ther's nuthin' between us but that he's
jest my great big friend," he explained.

His reward came promptly in the girl's sunny smile. And the sight of
it quickened his pulses and set him longing to hold her again in his
arms as he had done only yesterday. Somehow she had taken a place in
his thoughts which left him feeling very helpless. He never remembered
feeling helpless before. It was as though her coming into his life had
robbed him of all his confidence. Yesterday he had found a woman
almost in rags. Yesterday she was in trouble, and it had seemed the
simplest thing in the world for him to take her in his arms and carry
her to the home he knew to be hers. Now--now, all that confidence was
gone. Now an indefinable barrier, but none the less real, had been
raised between them. It was a barrier he felt powerless to break down.
This beautiful girl, with her deep violet eyes and wonderful red-gold
hair, clad in her trim costume of lawn and serge, seemed to him like a
creature from an undreamed-of world, and as remote from him as if
thousands of miles separated them. He sighed as Joan went on with her
examination--

"I suppose you have come to fetch some of your big friend's
belongings?" she said pleasantly.

For answer Buck suddenly flung out a protecting arm.

"Say, you're sure getting mussed with that dirty litter," he said
almost reproachfully. "See, your fixin's are right agin it. Say----"

Joan laughed outright at his look of profound concern.

"That doesn't mat