her involved, entirely labored attempts at the facetious.
But when she saw the blood steal up and stain Stephen O'Mara's face,
she realized that it was the very sort of a suggestion from which, on
her lips, he had turned roughly away. Coming from the lips of her
father, Steve accepted gravely, with a matching briefness that could
not hide a surge of triumph. A month before Barbara would have been
unable to understand why there was any difference, simply because the
suggestion came from another. Now, when it could no longer make or mar
her happiness, she understood very well indeed.

She rode with him that day until he told her that it was time for her
to turn back. With Ragtime standing quiet, she laid her face against
his, and complained that he had promised her she should never be
allowed to go more than arms' length away from him, once she was his.

"This is the last time," he told her, in a voice vibrant and low.
"This is the last time--for you and me."

He held her closer for a moment.

"You will be ready when I come back?"

She bobbed her head.

"Ready--and waiting," she said.

She sat and put up a hand to him, wistfully disconsolate, before he
disappeared beyond a twist in the trail.

* * * * * *

The next night, in the cabin up-river, after Miriam had left them alone
to what she termed their complacent silence, Garry Devereau and Steve
sat a long while before the former raised a face alight with his rare
mirth.

"Remember Joe's one proposed journey into the realms of romance?" he
asked suddenly.

Openly Steve grinned, and nodded.

"Remember how Joe threatened to close the last chapter?"

Steve nodded again.

"Well, here we are!" chuckled Garry. "I, poor but honest, already in
the toils of matrimony; and you, a plutocrat in sudden danger of a
government investigation, I'm told, and hovering on the brink!"

"Here we are!" echoed Steve.

And that was as close as either of them came to outspoken emotion.
With a lightness somewhat self-conscious, Garry had alluded to the
property which Caleb Hunter had turned over to Steve. There was a
trace of like humor in the latter's reply.

"I certainly am oppressed with the cares of sudden wealth," said he.

They were silent again, and then they heard lifted at a distance a thin
and reedy tenor. Joe was still humming his inevitable ballad, when he
entered and closed the door behind him, with an alarming flourish.

"