d.

"I've been back an hour myself, and they said you'd gone out before,"
her husband retorted suspiciously.

"Perhaps it was earlier," Adelle replied indifferently.

She cared less than she had once for Archie's outbursts of temper, and
at present her mind was occupied with other matters than calming him.
Archie looked at her with a peculiar stare in which ugliness and
something more evil were mixed.

"Been having such an interesting conversation that you didn't know how
fast time was going?" he sneered.

"Yes," Adelle replied literally.

"Talkin' with that fellow?" Archie demanded, hitching a shoulder in the
direction of the stone mason, who was still sitting not far off watching
the couple.

"Yes, I had something important to say to him," Adelle replied, and
started away.

But Archie did not stir.

"I have something important to say to him, too," he growled, walking
towards the mason.

"Archie!" Adelle called.

But Archie paid no attention. He strode furiously up to the shack, and
even before he reached it he called out,--

"Here, you there! What business have you got building your dirty little
roost on my land without permission?"

The mason merely smiled at the angry man in reply. Adelle, who had run
up to her husband, tried to pull him back, with a hand on his arm.

"It isn't our land," she said disgustedly. Her foolish husband did not
even know the boundaries of their own property, which stopped at the
edge of the eucalyptus grove on the top of the hill.

"Well, I won't have him tracking up the place with his paths," Archie
said weakly. "He was prowling around the house last night. I saw him."

The mason again smiled at him, as if he scorned to answer back a man who
was so evidently "in his booze," as he would put it, and trying to pick
a quarrel.

"Anyway you are discharged," he said, in a lordly attempt to get back
his dignity. "See Mr. Ferguson in the morning and get your money
and--get out!"

"I will not," the mason replied imperturbably.

"What do you say?"

Clark grinned at Adelle and replied with an intentional drawl,--

"I been discharged once on this job and taken back, and this time I mean
to stick until the job's done."

"No, you won't!" Archie shouted.

"Oh, so I won't?... Well, I ain't taking my orders from you. She's the
boss on the ranch, I guess."

He indicated Adelle with a nod. This came altogether too near the truth
to be pleasant for Archie.

"You damned--"