that stage of the game.

"If we can manage to hold our own for just a little while longer,
Robert Barrett will be a very rich man, Miss Everton. May I venture to
hand you a lot of good wishes before the fact? I know this is only a
very old friend's privilege, but----"

Her embarrassment was very charming, and, as I saw it, most natural.

"I--indeed, I wasn't thinking any more of Mr. Barrett than I was of--of
you and--and Mr. Gifford," she faltered. "I simply couldn't bear to
think of this terrible thing dropping upon you out of a clear sky
if--if you hadn't been doing anything to deserve it. Can you defend
yourselves in any way?"

"We can try mighty hard," I asserted. "That is what I meant when I
said that we were not going to be driven off to-morrow. Possession is
nine points of the law. We have our little foothold here, and we shall
try to keep it. I'll tell Barrett when he wakes, and we'll be ready
for them when they come. Now you must let me take you back home. You
really oughtn't to be here alone, you know."

She made no objection to the bit of elder-brother-ism, but half-way up
to the summit of the spur she had her small fling at the conventions.

"I don't admit that I ought not to have come alone; neither that, nor
your right to question it," she said definitively. "You protest
because you are conventional: so am I conventional--but only so far as
the conventions subserve some good end. There are situations in which
the phrase, 'it isn't done,' becomes a mere impertinence. This is life
in the making, up here in these desolate hills, and we who are taking
part in the process are just plain men and women."

"That is true enough," I rejoined; and other than this there was little
said, or little chance for saying it, since the distance over the spur
was short and she would not let me show myself under the Lawrenceburg
masthead electrics.

I did not know, at the time, of any reason why I should have returned
to resume my lonesome watch at the shaft's mouth like a man walking
upon air, but so it was. There are women who keep the fair promise of
their childhood, and we admire them; there are others who prodigiously
and richly exceed that promise, and they own us, body and soul, from
the moment of re-discovery.

Throughout the long night hours following Mary Everton's visit I was
far enough, I hope, from envying Barrett; far enough, too, from the
thought that I might ever venture to ask any good