d Nick, assuming an
indifferent air.

"I dunno," Albert returned lethargically.

"There wasn't anything about a girl in the newspaper," pursued Nick;
"and young reporters don't generally have coin enough to travel with
a wife."

"They ain't married," said Albert.

"What!" exclaimed Nick eagerly.

"Nell says she heard her call him Mr. Pevensey before the stage started;
and he called her Miss What's-this."

Nick's little eyes glittered. "Then what in hell are they doing up here
together?" he muttered.

"Search me!" said Albert indifferently. "Nell says she can't make it
out."

"She seems to have taken a kind of shine to Nell," suggested Nick
carefully. "Women are sly as links. Pass a quiet word to Nell to draw
her out."

"She's tried," said Albert. "Nice as you please but mum. Why don't you
pump _him_?" he suggested, indicating Garth.

"Because he's a damned, self-sufficient dude!" Nick burst out with a
string of curses. "One of these porridge-mouthed Easterners that run up
their eyebrows with a 'my word!' at any free speech or liberality in a
man! The first time he finds himself in man's country he patronizes us!
Going to write us up! My God! My stomach turns over every time I look
at him!"

"Well, he better not get _you_ down on him," said Albert propitiatingly.

Natalie came sailing out of the farmhouse as fresh and smiling as
the morning itself. Garth hastened to meet her. A dark flush rose in
Grylls's cheeks, and he gritted his teeth, until the muscles stood
out in lumps on either side his jaw. He felt a desire to possess this
slender, swimming figure mounting in his brain to the pitch of madness.
As she passed him Natalie nodded not unkindly, and the big man's eyes
followed her in a sort of dog's agony.

Nell followed her out of the house; and Garth handed them both into the
stage. He did not get in himself, but stood on the ground below Natalie,
talking up to her. One of the horses had refused to drink at the trough,
and old Paul, wishing to give him another chance, sent Xavier for a pail
of water.

This Xavier deserves a word. The young breeds run to extremes of good
looks or ill; and in his case it was the latter. In downright English he
was hideous. A shock of intractable, lank hair hung over what he had of
a forehead; and underneath rolled a pair of whitey-blue eyes, with a
villainous cast in one of them. Some accident had carried Nature's work
even further, for one swarthy cheek was divided