t--"

"Indiscreet?" mused little Eve Edgarton. Again out of the murky
blackness her tilted chin caught up the flare of yellow lantern-light.
"Indiscreet?" she repeated monotonously. "Who? I?"

"Yes--you," grunted Barton. "Traipsing 'round all alone--after--"

"But I never am alone, Mr. Barton," protested the mild little voice.
"You see I always have the extra saddle, the extra railway ticket, the
extra what-ever-it-is. And--and--" Caressingly a little gold-tipped
hand reached out through the shadows and patted something indistinctly
metallic. "My mother's memory? My father's revolver?" she drawled.
"Why, what better company could any girl have? Indiscreet?" Slowly the
tip of her little nose tilted up into the light. "Why, down in the
Transvaal--two years ago," she explained painstakingly, "why, down in
the Transvaal--two years ago--they called me the best-chaperoned girl
in Africa. Indiscreet? Why, Mr. Barton, I never even saw an indiscreet
woman in all my life. Men, of course, are indiscreet sometimes," she
conceded conscientiously. "Down in the Transvaal two years ago, I had
to shoot up a couple of men for being a little bit indiscreet, but--"

In one jerk Barton raised himself to a sitting posture.

"You 'shot up' a couple of men?" he demanded peremptorily.

Through the crook of a mud-smeared elbow shoving back the sodden brim
of her hat, the girl glanced toward him like a vaguely perplexed
little ragamuffin. "It was--messy," she admitted softly. Out from her
snarl of storm-blown hair, tattered, battered by wind and rain, she
peered up suddenly with her first frowning sign of self-consciousness.
"If there's one thing in the world that I regret," she faltered
deprecatingly, "it's a--it's--an untidy fight."

Altogether violently Barton burst out laughing. There was no mirth in
the laugh, but just noise. "Oh, let's go home!" he suggested
hysterically.

"Home?" faltered little Eve Edgarton. With a sluggish sort of defiance
she reached out and gathered the big wet scrap-book to her breast.
"Why, Mr. Barton," she said, "we couldn't get home now in all this
storm and darkness and wash-out--to save our lives. But even if it
were moonlight," she singsonged, "and starlight--and high-noon; even
if there were--chariots--at the door, I'm not going home--now--till
I've finished my scrap-book--if it takes a week."

"Eh?" jerked Barton. "What?" Laboriously he edged himself forward. For
five hours now of reckless riding, of