Dunwoodie shook his head. "I figure it out differently. I think he's
really a big chap. He won all the fellows over in the railroad
offices--and he was pushed over the heads of some of them when he was
given that chief clerkship. And then the way he's got of standing up to
the General Manager and the other magnates. And you'll notice that if you
ever ask him a question he'll give you an answer that sets you to
thinking. He seems to work things out for himself. His mind doesn't just
run along the channel of traditions. I like him all the better because
he's not given to small talk. If there was anything worth while to talk
about, I'll bet you'd always find him saying something worth while."

"You're right about his not being strong about traditions. There's the
matter of his marriage. Maybe he knows all about Sylvia--and doesn't care.
He _must_ know about her."

"Don't make a mistake on that score. I've seen them together. He reveres
her. You can imagine his wanting to spread a cloak for her at every
step--as if she were too pure to come into contact with the earth."

"But good God, man! There's a path to her back door, worn there by fellows
who would tremble like a colt in the presence of a lady."

Dunwoodie frowned whimsically. "Don't say a path. It must be just a
trail--a more or less indistinct trail."

Blanchard looked almost excited. "It's a _path_, I tell you!"

And then both men laughed suddenly--though in Dunwoodie's laughter there
was a note of deprecation and regret.

CHAPTER III

And so Harboro and Sylvia went home to the house on the Quemado Road
without knowing that the town had washed its hands of them.

Harboro had made certain arrangements which were characteristic of him,
perhaps, and which nobody knew anything about. For example, he had
employed the most presentable Mexican woman he could find, to make the
house homelike. He had taken a little sheaf of corn-husks away from her so
that she could not make any cigarettes for a day or two, and he had read
her a patient lecture upon ways and means of making a lot of furniture
look as if it had some direct relationship with human needs and pleasures.
And he had advised and aided her in the preparation of a wedding supper
for two. He had ordered grapes from Parras, and figs--black figs, a little
withered, and candied _tunas._ And there was a roast of beef with herbs
and chili sauce, and _enchalades._

The electric lights were turned on up-