guess your father'll
have to go down below."

"What do you mean by that?"

The sheriff explained, "The cells are below."

Helen was instantly alarmed. "Oh no!" she protested. "My father is not
at all well. Please give him my room. I'll go down below."

"It won't be necessary for either of you to go below," interposed the
sheriff. "Hanscom, I'll put Kauffman in your charge. You can take him to
your boarding-house if you want to."

"You're very kind," said Helen, with such feeling that the sheriff
reacted to it. "I hope it won't get you into trouble."

"Oh, I don't think it will," he said, cheerily. "So long as I know he's
safe, it don't matter where he sleeps."

"Well, you'd better all stay to supper, anyhow," said Mrs. Throop. "It's
ready and waiting."

No one but Helen perceived anything unusual in this hearty offhand
invitation. To Hanscom it was just another instance of Western
hospitality, and to the sheriff a common service, and so a few minutes
later they all sat down at the generous table, in such genial mood (with
Mrs. Throop doing her best to make them feel at home) that all their
troubles became less than shadows.

Although disinclined to go into a detailed story of his return to the
hills, Hanscom described the capture of the housebreakers and, in spite
of a careful avoidance of anything which might sound like boasting,
disclosed the fact that at the moment when he threw open the door of
the cabin he had exposed himself to the weapons of a couple of reckless
young outlaws and might have been killed.

"You shouldn't have risked that," Helen protested. "Our poor possessions
are not worth such cost."

"I couldn't endure the notion of those hoodlums looting the place," he
explained.

At the thought of Rita (who was occupying a cell in the women's ward)
Helen grew a little sad, for, according to the ranger's own account, she
was hardly more than a child, and had been led away by her first
passion.

At the close of the meal, upon Mrs. Throop's housewifely invitation,
they all took seats in the "front room" and Helen quite forgot that she
was a prisoner, and the ranger almost returned to boyhood as he faced
the marble-topped table, the cabinet organ, and the enlarged family
portraits on the walls, for of such quality were his mother's adornments
in the old home at Circle Bend. Something vaguely intimate and a little
confusing filled his mind as he listened to the voice of the woman
before him. Only