is a pretty large hotel, as you said,
and I shall be about five miles away--at the Thorlakson siding where
breakfast is served at five-thirty. Good-night, madam."

"Pardon my presumption for making the suggestion, Mr. Kendrick," she
said sweetly as he bowed a second time and was turning away, "but with
a five-mile walk ahead of you, don't you think it would be advisable
to--put on your other boot?"

The moon, which had floated free of the tree-tops, was bathing their
faces and for an instant they gazed at each other with ponderous
gravity. Suddenly Phil sat down again and they joined in a peal of
laughter.

The echo of it was still knocking for admittance among the hills when a
strange wild laugh floated unexpectedly abroad from a point off to the
right. Involuntarily the girl shrank closer to him.

"For pity's sake!" she gasped. "What was that?"

"Just a loon on the lake over there--a harmless goose of a thing," and
Phil grinned at her reassuringly as he laced his boot. "But he isn't
as crazy as his laugh. That's just his way of singing 'I Hear You
Calling Me.'"

"Then give me John McCormack." He smiled as he caught her
surreptitiously opening the silver-meshed reticule and powdering her
nose, but pretended that he had not seen this bit of feminine
incongruity. "My, how still everything is!" she said a moment later in
a subdued voice as she swept a glance around at the silver landscape
and up at the stars, fixed and dim in the infinite leagues of distance.
"It would be possible to go crazy here very quickly, I suppose."

"You'd soon get used to the quiet; then the racket of the city would
drive you crazy. Say, speaking of wild geese, Miss Lawson, reminds me
that as soon as I learned where you had gone and what for, I followed
you to tell you that this is a wild-goose chase you're on. That
envelope contains a package of stage money. It's just a dummy,
prepared by Mr. Wade to duplicate the one stolen not long ago from the
Alderson Construction Company. Object: to fool that fellow, Podmore.
Before we make any more mistakes, hadn't we better try to understand
each other's position? As a starter I'm going to ask you to read this
letter from the Chief. Wait, I'll scratch a match for you."

Before this speech was half completed he had Miss Cristy Lawson's
undivided attention. She gazed at him in amazement, and as he shielded
the burning match with glow-reddened fingers her eyes raced eagerly
over the