at the color came into her cheek. For a moment she scarcely
dared to lift her conscious eyes to his. When she did so, she suddenly
glanced her own aside with a flash of anger. He was laughing.

"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated. "Stay
a moment longer, and my fortune is made. The passengers will report us
all over Red Dog as engaged. I shall be supposed to be in your
father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director of all the
new companies. The 'Record' will double its circulation; poetry will
drop out of its columns, advertising rush to fill its place, and I
shall receive five dollars a week more salary, if not seven and a half.
Never mind the consequences to yourself at such a moment. I assure you
there will be none. You can deny it the next day--I will deny it--nay,
more, the 'Record' itself will deny it in an extra edition of one
thousand copies, at ten cents each. Linger a moment longer, Miss
Mulrady. Fly, oh fly not yet. They're coming--hark! oh! By Jove,
it's only Don Caesar!"

It was, indeed, only the young scion of the house of Alvarado,
blue-eyed, sallow-skinned, and high-shouldered, coming towards them on
a fiery, half-broken mustang, whose very spontaneous lawlessness seemed
to accentuate and bring out the grave and decorous ease of his rider.
Even in his burlesque preoccupation the editor of the "Record" did not
withhold his admiration of this perfect horsemanship. Mamie, who, in
her wounded amour propre, would like to have made much of it to annoy
her companion, was thus estopped any ostentatious compliment.

Don Caesar lifted his hat with sweet seriousness to the lady, with
grave courtesy to the gentleman. While the lower half of this Centaur
was apparently quivering with fury, and stamping the ground in his
evident desire to charge upon the pair, the upper half, with natural
dignity, looked from the one to the other, as if to leave the privilege
of an explanation with them. But Mamie was too wise, and her companion
too indifferent, to offer one. A slight shade passed over Don Caesar's
face. To complicate the situation at that moment, the expected
stagecoach came rattling by. With quick feminine intuition, Mamie
caught in the faces of the driver and the expressman, and reflected in
the mischievous eyes of her companion, a peculiar interpretation of
their meeting, that was not removed by the whispered assurance of the
editor that the passengers were