nd Peggy--though she wondered at his tone--was
too grateful for his presence even to question Alice's motive in
permitting such remarks.

As for Alice, she felt herself more and more involved in the tangled
skein of his mysterious life. His sudden and reckless abandonment of the
old love which had ruined him, and the new and equally irrational regard
which he now professed for her, filled her with a delicious marveling.

He appealed to a woman's imagination. He had the spice of the unknown.
In her relationship with Ward there was no danger, no mystery--his
courtship narrowly escaped being commonplace. She had accepted his
attentions and expected to marry him, and yet the thought of the union
produced, at its warmest, merely a glow of comfort, a sense of security,
whereas the hint of being loved and protected by this Rob Roy of the
hills, this reckless Rough Rider of the wilderness, was instinct with
romance. Of course his devotion was a crazy folly, and yet, lying there
in her rough bunk, with an impenetrable wall of snow shutting out the
rest of the world, it was hard not to feel that this man and his future
had become an inescapable part of her life--a part which grew in danger
and in charm from hour to hour.

Full two miles above the level of her own home, surrounded by peaks
unscalably wild and lonely, deserted by those who should care for her,
was it strange that she should return this man's adoring gaze with
something of the primal woman's gratitude and submission?

The noon darkened into dusk as they talked, slowly, with long pauses,
and one by one the stirring facts of the rover's life came out. From his
boyhood he had always done the reckless thing. He had known no restraint
till, as a member of the Rough Riders, he yielded a partial obedience to
his commanders. When the excitement of the campaigns was over he had
deserted and gone back to the round-up wagon and the camp-fire.

In the midst of his confidences he maintained a reserve about his family
which showed more self-mastery than anything else about him. That he was
the black sheep of an honorable flock became increasingly evident. He
had been the kind of lad who finds in the West a fine field for
daredevil adventure. And yet there were unstirred deeps in the man. He
was curious about a small book which Alice kept upon her bed, and which
she read from time to time with serene meditation on her face.

"What is that?" he asked.

"My Bible."

"Can I