ut of the stage, and,
without taking any further notice of the occupants, called up to know if
there was a seat outside.

"Yes. Let me give you a hand," said Gordon, leaning down and helping him
up. "How are you?"

Wickersham looked at him quickly as he reached the boot.

"Hello! You here?" The rest of his sentence was a malediction on the
barbarians in the coach below and a general consignment of them all to a
much warmer place than the boot of the Gumbolt stage.

"What are you doing here?" Wickersham asked.

"I am driving the stage."

"Regularly?" There was something in the tone and look that made Keith
wish to say no, but he said doggedly:

"I have done it regularly, and was glad to get the opportunity."

He was conscious of a certain change in Wickersham's manner toward him.

As they drove along he asked Wickersham about Norman and his people, but
the other answered rather curtly.

Norman had married.

"Yes." Keith had heard that. "He married Miss Caldwell, didn't he? She
was a very pretty girl."

"What do you know about here?" Wickersham asked. His tone struck Keith.

"Oh, I met her once. I suppose they are very much in love with each
other?"

Wickersham gave a short laugh. "In love with Norman! Women don't fall in
love with a lump of ice."

"I do not think he is a lump of ice," said Keith, firmly.

Wickersham did not answer at first, then he said sharply:

"Well, she's worth a thousand of him. She married him for his money.
Certainly not for his brains."

"Norman has brains--as much as any one I know," defended Keith.

"You think so!"

Keith remembered a certain five minutes out behind the stables at
Elphinstone.

He wanted to ask Wickersham about another girl who was uppermost in his
thoughts, but something restrained him. He could not bear to hear her
name on his lips. By a curious coincidence, Wickersham suddenly said:
"You used to teach at old Rawson's. Did you ever meet a girl named
Yorke--Alice Yorke? She was down this way once."

Keith said that he had met "Miss Yorke." He had met her at Ridgely
Springs and also in New York. He was glad that it was dark, and that
Wickersham could not see his face. "A very pretty girl," he hazarded as
a leader, now that the subject was broached.

"Yes, rather. Going abroad--title-hunting."

"I don't expect Miss Yorke cares about a title," said Keith, stiffly.

"Mamma does. Failing that, she wants old Lancaster and perquisites."

"Who does? W