he was quite aware that the storekeeper
was scarcely likely to supply axemen and ranchers, whose tastes were
simple and dollars scarce, with what she guessed by its bouquet was the
finest product of Costa Rica. If she had not been, she was capable of
deducing a little from the stamp upon the packets she had seen in Mrs.
Margery's store, which showed that they had come direct from Vancouver.

Alton took up the cup handed him, and leaned back in his chair with a
little gesture of content, while the girl smiled as she glanced at him.

[Illustration: Alton leaned back with a little gesture of content.]

"You bear it very well," she said.

The man looked at her with a bewildered expression for a moment or two.
Then he laughed. "No," he said, "I find it wonderfully nice."

There was an underlying sincerity in his voice, and Alice Deringham
driven by curiosity went a step farther.

"The coffee?" she said.

She was almost sorry next moment, for she had at other times called up
considerably more than she had expected or desired from the unsounded
depths of the man's nature. For a second or two there was a great
wistfulness, which changed into a little glow she shrank from, in his
eyes. He turned them upon her, and then away, and they were once more
grave when he looked back again. Still, she guessed what that effort
had cost him.

"No," he said quietly. "I did not mean the coffee. You see, I had
never until you came here been used to anything smooth or pretty."

Alice Deringham smiled a little, for she understood. The man, she
thought, was willing she should accept the somewhat pointless
compliment as the sequence of his former speech, to cover his mistake
if he had betrayed more than he thought desirable. It also increased
her liking for him, since it appeared that Alton was capable of
self-restraint. There was, however, no mistaking what she had seen,
and the girl remembered that one of the Winnipeg ladies she travelled
with, who had visited one of the weird valleys across the American
frontier, described to her the fascination of throwing stones into the
basin of a geyser to see how many it would take before it erupted.
During her intercourse with rancher Alton, Alice Deringham had
experienced the sensation.

"You have been working too hard lately, and worrying, too, I think,"
she said.

Alton laughed a little, and then glanced at the stove for a while in
silence, as though communing with himself. Whe