had doubtless heard his footsteps on the gravel.

"It's the throttle," said Ford, answering her question. And then:
"Please go on: he is out of hearing."

"They were speaking of you and brother; and--and of _me_. I can't repeat
a single sentence entire, but I know Mr. North was accusing you in some
way, and apparently implicating me. Perhaps I listened in self-defense.
Do you think I did, Mr. Ford?"

"You certainly had a good right to," said Ford, who would have sworn in
her behalf that the morally black was spotlessly white. "But how could
you be implicated?"

"That was what puzzled me then--and it is puzzling me still. They
said--or rather Mr. North said--that you--that you had _bought_ me!"

Ford did not say that he would like to buy, beg, borrow or steal any
kind of right to call her his own, but if his lips did not form the
words they were lying at the bottom of the steady gray eyes for her to
take or leave as she chose.

"I am sure you couldn't have heard that part of it quite straight," he
said, almost regretfully.

"But I did, because it was repeated. Mr. North insisted that you had
bought me; and I didn't like the way in which he said it, either. He
called me 'the little Alicia'."

"What!" said Ford; and then a flood of light burst in upon at least one
of the dark places. "It's only a mine," he said sheepishly. "And I did
buy it, or half of it."

She was regarding him accusingly now.

"Did you--did you name it?" she asked, and there was the merest breath
of frost in the air.

He was glad to be able to tell the truth without flinching.

"No; it is one of the earliest of the Copah prospects, and I suppose the
discoverer named it. I am willing to defend his choice, though. He
couldn't have found a prettier name."

She went back to the matter in hand with womanly swiftness. "But the
mine: you had a right to buy it, didn't you?"

"I should suppose so. I paid for it with my own money, anyway."

"Then why should Mr. North use it as an argument against you in speaking
to Uncle Sidney? He did that--I am sure he did that."

"Now the water has grown too deep for me," said Ford. "Why, North,
himself, is interested in Copah, openly. He owns half a dozen claims."

"Near yours?" she queried.

Ford stopped to consider. "To tell the truth, I don't know where mine
is," he confessed. "I bought it as the school-boys trade
pocket-knives--sight unseen. You wouldn't believe it of a grown man,
would you?"

"Wh