be lost."

"One cannot tell," I answered; "lives do not count so much in new
lands."

"Killing is hateful, but I like to see courage."

And she did see it.

CHAPTER XVII. RIDING THE REEFS

The next afternoon Roscoe was sitting on the coping deep in thought,
when Ruth rode up with her father, dismounted, and came upon him so
quietly that he did not hear her. I was standing in the trees a little
distance away.

She spoke to him once, but he did not seem to hear. She touched his arm.
He got to his feet.

"You were so engaged that you did not hear me," she said.

"The noise of the rapids!" he answered, after a strange pause, "and your
footstep is very light."

She leaned her chin on her hand, rested against the rail of the coping,
looked meditatively into the torrent below, and replied: "Is it so
light?" Then after a pause: "You have not asked me how I came, who came
with me, or why I am here."

"It was first necessary for me to conceive the delightful fact that you
are here," he said in a dazed, and, therefore, not convincing tone.

She looked him full in the eyes. "Please do not pay me the ill
compliment of a compliment," she said. "Was it the sailor who spoke then
or the--or yourself? It is not like you."

"I did not mean it as a compliment," he replied. "I was thinking about
critical and important things."

"'Critical and important' sounds large," she returned.

"And the awakening was sudden," he continued. "You must make allowance,
please, for--"

"For the brusque appearance of a very unimaginative, substantial, and
undreamlike person? I do. And now, since you will not put me quite at my
ease by assuming, in words, that I have been properly 'chaperoned' here,
I must inform you that my father waits hard by--is, as my riotous young
brother says, 'without on the mat.'"

"I am very glad," he replied with more politeness than exactness.

"That I was duly escorted, or that my father is 'without on the mat'?
... However, you do not appear glad one way or the other. And now I must
explain our business. It is to ask your company at dinner (do consider
yourself honoured--actually a formal dinner party in the Rockies!) to
meet the lieutenant-governor, who is coming to see our famous Viking
and Sunburst.... But you are expected to go out where my father feeds
his--there, see--his horse on your 'trim parterre.' And now that I have
done my duty as page and messenger without a word of assistance, Mr.
Ros