sham an inch or more taller and
inches narrower in shoulder and girth of chest. Perfunctorily they
nodded, each to the other, and wheeled silently upon their heels.

Steve did not respond the next morning when Joe summoned the rest with
a long spoon applied heartily to the flat of a huge tin basin; and over
the breakfast table Joe explained to the assembled guests the reason
for his absence. Before daybreak a rider had come from Morrison,
bearing word from Hardwick Elliott that Ainnesley was on from Manhattan
and wanted to talk with him; before the camp was fairly awake he had
ridden away into the south. And returning two days later, travelling
the lower, lesser trails that followed the river, in order to save
time, Steve missed her party going out. So, in the last moment, after
days and days of patient waiting, did Chance trick him sadly.

How much or how little Wickersham might have overseen the night before
he betrayed not at all at breakfast the next morning, either by word or
look. And throughout that day, and the day that followed, while she
rode at his side, undetermined whether she should attempt an
explanation, Barbara found his face inscrutable. It was a week later,
the night preceding her departure from the hills, long after the girl
had ceased to think of him at all in connection with the incident,
before she learned how much he really knew.

Miss Sarah had found her brother most uncommunicative upon his return
from Thirty-Mile. In response to her first question concerning Steve
he had assured her, lifelessly, that the latter was looking very well
indeed, and let it go at that. Because she was a very remarkable
woman, Miss Sarah had been able to curb her curiosity for several days,
but on that particular evening she found it impossible calmly to wait
longer.

"You have not told me yet, Cal," she reproached him at dinner, in her
slightly lisping voice, "how much progress Steve seems to have made.
You know how interested I am, and you must realize how undignified a
thirty-mile dash on horseback would be on my part, in order to find
out, myself."

While up-river Caleb had found much time in which to talk with Garry
Devereau--that is to say, quite a little time, in view of the fact that
Miriam Burrell, in boots and mackinaw, had insisted upon following
Garry wherever he went. And since his return to Morrison he had been
spending a surprisingly large share of his days in conference with
Hardwick El