u put it up to
yourself. You're that way."

"Am I?" He flashed a questioning look at her. "Then, since you know
that, perhaps you know, too, what--what I'm trying to tell you."

"Perhaps I do," she whispered softly to the fire.

There was panic in his eyes. "--That . . . that I--"

"--That you are sensitive and have a good deal of imagination," the
girl concluded gently.

"No, I'll not feed my vanity with pleasant lies to-night." He gave a
little gesture of self-scorn as he rose to throw some dry sticks on the
fire. "What I mean and what you mean is that--that I'm an arrant
coward." Roy gulped the last words out as if they burned his throat.

"I don't mean that at all," she flamed. "How can you say such a thing
about yourself when everybody knows that you're the bravest man in
Washington County?"

"No--no. I'm a born trembler." From where he stood beyond the fire he
looked across at her with dumb anguish in his eyes. "You say yourself
you've noticed it. Probably everybody that knows me has."

"I didn't say that." Her dark eyes challenged his very steadily.
"What I said was that you have too much imagination to rush into danger
recklessly. You picture it all out vividly beforehand and it worries
you. Isn't that the way of it?"

He nodded, ashamed.

"But when the time comes, nobody could be braver than you," she went
on. "You've been tried out a dozen times in the last three months.
You have always made good."

"Made good! If you only knew!" he answered bitterly.

"Knew what? I saw you down at Hart's when Dan Meldrum ordered you to
kneel and beg. But you gamed it out, though you knew he meant to kill
you."

He flushed beneath the tan. "I was too paralyzed to move. That's the
simple truth."

"Were you too paralyzed to move down at the arcade of the Silver
Dollar?" she flashed at him.

"It was the drink in me. I wasn't used to it and it went to my head."

"Had you been drinking that time at the depot?" she asked with a touch
of friendly irony.

"That wasn't courage. If it would have saved me, I would have run like
a rabbit. But there was no chance. The only hope I had was to throw a
fear into him. But all the time I was sick with terror."

She rose and walked round the camp-fire to him. Her eyes were shining
with a warm light of admiration. Both hands went out to him
impulsively.

"My friend, that is the only kind of courage really worth having. That
kind you earn. It