y."

"A day? Really?"

"I'll take a steamer trunk----"

"And a maid?"

"No."

"You'll go off gypsying with me alone, Barbara?"

"Yes."

"Give me directions. I'll get tickets to-morrow."

So it was decided. Barbara plunged into dismantling her rooms and
packing her things. She dispatched the maid and many trunks to the
country. The next night, when Paul came in, she stood in the midst of
the denuded rooms.

"You actually did it. You Irish do put things through!" he exclaimed.

"We do. Get the tickets?"

"I did, and wired the ranchman. We go on the Century to Chicago."

"Good!"

"You're not afraid of this new experiment?"

"Which one?"

"Going off alone into the wilderness with me. We will be dependent on
each other. No little 'convenances' in the woods, you know."

"I'm not afraid. I'd go alone with my maid, and you would be some
protection."

He laughed, but not too readily.

They set out next day, both too tired for any sense of adventure. Bob
had the drawing-room, and Paul wandered in and out, interrupting her
reading. The trip west, beyond Chicago, was uneventful and hot. It was
only when they arrived at Loveland, where they took the motor into the
Park, that their interest began to awaken.

The ride into Estes along the narrow roads, winding between high cliffs
on one side, the roaring, foaming, booming Big Thompson River on the
other--higher and higher and wilder as it winds--whipped Bob's spirits
into a froth of talk and laughter. Paul was conscious of a sense of
peril in her nearness, in her charm. He warned himself of the great
disadvantage of being the one of them who cared. "We start even," he had
said on that eventful day. "I wonder how we'll end?" he mused, looking
into her vivid face.

"Odds on the Irish," she laughed, reading his thoughts. Whereupon he
blushed guiltily.

III

They came into the valley itself, beyond the town of Estes, at sunset,
and Bob gasped with the glory of it. A long strip of fertile green land,
with the river winding across it many times, like a satin ribbon. The
massive mountains of the Great Divide, snow-capped, pink-tipped, in the
setting sun, stood guard over the valley like watchmen. As Paul watched
Barbara's face he thought it was like a prayer of exultation.

They drew up to the long, low brown ranch house and were welcomed by the
proprietor.

"Mighty glad to meet ye and have ye with us. Ye didn't say what size
cabin ye wanted, but I took y