all gone when
I got up, a little while ago." Then, remembering that she did not know
this man, and that she was a long way from neighbours, she added, "If
you'll leave a message I can tell dad when he comes home."

"No-o--I'll ride over to-morrow or next day. I'm the man at Whisper.
You can tell him I called, and that I'll call again."

Still he did not go, and Lorraine waited. Some instinct warned her
that the man had not yet stated his real reason for coming, and she
wondered a little what it could be. He seemed to be watching her
covertly, yet she failed to catch any telltale admiration for her in
his scrutiny. She decided that his forehead was too narrow to please
her, and that his eyes were too close together, and that the lines
around his mouth were cruel lines and gave the lie to his smile, which
was pleasant enough if you just looked at the smile and paid no
attention to anything else in his face.

"You had quite an experience getting out here, they tell me," he
observed carelessly; too carelessly, thought Lorraine, who was well
schooled in the circumlocutions of delinquent tenants, agents of
various sorts and those who crave small gossip of their neighbours.
"Heard you were lost up in Rock City all night."

Lorraine looked up at him, startled. "I caught a terrible cold," she
said, laughing nervously. "I'm not used to the climate," she added
guardedly.

The man fumbled in his pocket and produced smoking material. "Do you
mind if I smoke?" he asked perfunctorily.

"Why, no. It doesn't concern me in the slightest degree." Why, she
thought confusedly, must she always be reminded of that horrible place
of rocks? What was it to this man where she had been lost?

"You must of got there about the time the storm broke," the man
hazarded after a silence. "It's sure a bad place in a thunderstorm.
Them rocks draw lightning. Pretty bad, wasn't it?"

"Lightning is always bad, isn't it?" Lorraine tried to hold her voice
steady. "I don't know much about it. We don't have thunderstorms to
amount to anything, in Los Angeles. It sometimes does thunder there in
the winter, but it is very mild."

With hands that trembled she picked the cat off the rail and started
toward the house. "I'll tell dad what you said," she told him,
glancing back over her shoulder. When she saw that he had turned his
horse and was frankly following her to the house, her heart jumped
wildly into her throat--judging by the feel