to hope for from you when you treat a stranger so
inexcusably?" she said in a low, clear voice that had a sharp edge.

[Illustration: Tingling with the Increasing Desire to knock down his
Host and catch this Girl up in his Arms]

"Let me run this," said Rufus with bravado. "You'll find out later what
you'll get from me, and it will be nothin' to complain of when once
you're Mrs. Carder. You can have that fat porpoise or any other woman
come to see you, and when you're ridin' 'em around in the new car I'm
goin' to get you, they'll be green with envy. You'll see. Let me run
this."

His absorption in Geraldine had distracted Carder's attention from the
fact that he was not hearing the departure of that most satirically
named engine of misery, "The Silent Traveler."

He strode to a window and saw Ben Barry mounting his machine close to
where Pete was mowing the grass.

He hurried to the door. "Come here, you damned coot!" he yelled. And
Pete dropped the mower and ambled up to the office-door.

"What did that man want of you?" he asked furiously.

"Wanted to know the shortest road to Keefe," replied Pete in his usual
sullen tone.

"You lie!" exclaimed Rufus. If Ben Barry had looked like a dusty Sir
Galahad to Geraldine, he had looked dangerously attractive to Carder,
who cursed the luck that had made him invite the girl to his office on
this particular afternoon. "You lie!" he repeated, and stepping back to
his desk he seized a whip which lay along one side of it.

Geraldine cried out, and springing forward grasped his arm. He paused at
the first voluntary touch he had ever received from her.

"Don't you dare strike that boy!" she exclaimed breathlessly.

Carder looked down at the white horror in her face and in her shining
eyes.

"I'm goin' to get the truth out of him," he said, his mouth twitching.
"You go up to the house."

"I will not go up to the house! Put down that whip! If you strike Pete,
I'll kill myself." She finished speaking, more slowly, and Rufus,
looking down into her strangely changed look, became uneasy.

"I guess not," he said. "You go up to the house."

"I mean it," declared Geraldine in a low tone. "What have I to live for!
My own father, the only one on earth I had to love, has sold me to a man
who has shown himself a ruffian. One thing you have no power over is my
life, and what have I now to live for!"

Carder dropped the whip. There was no doubt of her sincerity.

"Now, Geraldine