ght from the heart."

It was not hard to see how the likeness between them contributed to
the mistake that had been current concerning them. Side by side, no
man could have mistaken one for the other. The color of their eyes,
the shade of hair, even the cut of their features, were different. But
beneath all distinctions in detail ran a family resemblance not to be
denied. This man looked like his cousin, the sheepman, as the latter
might have done if all his life he had given a free rein to evil
passions.

The height, the build, the elastic tread of each, made further
contributions to this effect of similarity.

"What are you doing here?" They were the first words spoken by the man
on the lounge and they rang with a curt challenge.

"Come to inquire after the health of my dear cousin," came the prompt
silken answer.

"You villain!"

"My dear cousin, y'u speak with such conviction that y'u almost persuade
me. But of course if I'm a villain I've got to live up to my reputation.
Haven't I, Miss Messiter?"

"Wouldn't it be better to live it down?" she asked with a quietness
that belied her terror. For there had been in his manner a threat,
not against her but against the man whom her heart acknowledged as her
lover.

He laughed. "Y'u're still hoping to make a Sunday school superintendent
out of me, I see. Y'u haven't forgot all your schoolmarm ways yet, but
I'll teach y'u to forget them."

The other cousin watched him with a cool, quiet glance that never
wavered. The outlaw was heavily armed, but his weapons were sheathed,
and, though there was a wary glitter behind the vindictive exultation
in his eyes, his capable hands betrayed no knowledge of the existence of
his revolvers. It was, he knew, to be a moral victory, if one at all.

"Hope I'm not disturbing any happy family circle," he remarked, and,
taking two limping steps forward, he lifted the book from the girl's
unresisting hands. "H'm! Barrie. I don't go much on him. He's too
sissy for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would
be reading something like that," he concluded, a flicker of sneering
contempt crossing his face.

"Perhaps y'u'll learn some time to attend to your own business," said
the man on the couch quietly.

Hatred gleamed in the narrowed slits from which the soul of the other
cousin looked down at him. "I'm a philanthropist, and my business is
attending to other people's. They raise sheep, for instance, and I
market th