-where--in--the----"

"Just landed from Alaska. Had to run up there from California. How are
you, little princess?"

His hand was out to her, then both hands, beseechingly, but she did not
run to him, as she had at Flathead Lake. She stalked him cautiously, and
shook hands--much too heartily. She sought cover in the wing-chair
and--much too cordially--she invited:

"Tell me all about it."

He was watching her. Already his old pursuing determination, his steady
dignity, were beginning to frighten her. But he calmly dropped into a
straight chair, and obliged:

"It's really been quite a lively journey. Didn't know I could like
roughing-it so well. And it was real roughing-it, pretty much. Oh, not
dangerous at all, but rather vigorous. I had to canoe up three hundred
miles of a shallow river, with one Indian guide, making a portage every
ten miles or so, and we got tipped over in the rapids now and then--the
Big Chief almost got drowned once--and we camped at night in the
original place where they invented mosquitoes--and one morning I shot a
black bear just in time to keep him from eating my boots."

"Oh!" she sighed in admiration, and "Oh!" again, uneasily.

Nothing had been said about it; Jeff was the last person in the world to
spoil his triumph by commenting on it; but both of them knew that they
had violently changed places; that now it was she who was the limp
indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired
her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be
serenely heroic.

She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_
you get the scar?"

"That? Oh, nothing."

"Please tell me."

"Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife,
playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have
given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big
Chief who got rid of him."

"He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!"

She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with
filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced
up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could
she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly.

If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap,
in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was----

Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life
with Jeff would be pro