the thing before. But he found as
the days went on that he had not before had a Jane to deal with. She was
linked in the minds of most of the men with a whiteness like that of her
own spotless shop.

Gradually Jane became aware of a sinister undercurrent. She found
herself dealing with forces that threatened her. There were men who came
into her shop to buy, and who stayed to say things that set her cheeks
flaming. She mentioned none of these things to Henry or Atwood or Tommy.
But she spoke once to O-liver.

"Tillotson must be at the bottom of it. Two drunken loafers stumbled in
the other day, straight from the hotel. And when I telephoned to
Tillotson to come and get them he laughed at me."

Tillotson was the sheriff. It was an office which he did not honor. In a
month or two his term would be up. O-liver riding alone into the
mountains stated the solution: "I've got to beat Tillotson."

But first he had things to say to Jane. Since his talk with his father
he had known that it must come. He had stayed away from her as much as
possible. It had not been a conspicuous withdrawal, for she was very
busy and had little time for him. Tommy's mother kept her little home in
order and looked after the invalid, so that Jane could give undivided
attention to her growing business. O-liver saw her most often at the
shop, when he stopped in for a pot of beans--eating them on the spot and
discoursing on many things.

"My Boston grandmother baked beans like this," he told her on one
occasion. "She was a great little woman, Jane, as essentially of the
East as you are of the West. She held to the traditions of the past; you
are blazing new ways for women, selling sandwiches in the market-place.
By Jove, it was superb the way you did it, Jane!"

She was always in a glow when he left her. Here was a man different from
her father, different from Henry Bittinger and Atwood Jones. She smiled
a little as she thought of Atwood. He had asked her to marry him. He had
told her of the things he had ahead of him that he wanted her to share.
And he had been much downcast when she had refused him. She had, he
felt, smudged the brightness of his splendid future. He couldn't
understand a woman throwing away a thing like that.

But he bore her no grudge and was still her friend. Henry, too, was her
friend. He had not yet tried his fate with Jane, but he still dreamed of
her as lovely in his long car and a fur coat. And he hoped to make his
drea