t."

"Really, you'd better come along with me, Mr. Latisan, out of the reach
of any such temptation."

"Perhaps you'd like to get a view of the falls from the best point," he
suggested, as they walked on.

When they turned into a path and disappeared from Crowley's ken the
latter buttoned his coat and started leisurely on their trail.

On the edge of the gorge there was a niche in the cliff, a natural seat
padded with moss. Latisan led her to the spot. He did not indulge his
longing to sit beside her; he stood at a little distance, respectfully,
and allowed her to think her thoughts. Those thoughts and her memories
were very busy just then; she was glad because the everlasting diapason
of the falls made conversation difficult.

Until then, in her reflections, she had been considering Ward Latisan
merely as her stricken grandfather's staff of hope, an aid so essential
that the Comas had determined to eliminate him. She surveyed him as he
stood there in his own and fitting milieu and found him reassuringly
stalwart as a dependable champion.

Alone with him, making estimate with her eyes and her understanding, she
was conscious that her first surprise at sight of the real Latisan was
giving way to deepening interest.

She reflected again on the character which had been given this man by
Rufus Craig, and remembered more vividly what she had written about him
for the guidance of the Vose-Mern agency.

There must be something wrong in Craig's estimate! She felt that she had
an eye of her own for qualities in a man, and this man's clean sincerity
had impressed her in their first meeting in the New York cafeteria.

He turned from his survey of the waters and met her gaze. "I was pretty
much flustered that day in New York, Miss Jones. I was more so to-day at
the railroad station. I don't know how to act with girls very well," he
confessed naively. "I want to say something right here and now. There
are mean stories going the rounds about me up in this country. I'm
afraid you'll hear some of them. I don't want you--I don't want
everybody to think I'm what they are trying to make out I am--they lied
over Tomah way to hurt me in business. But perhaps you don't care one
way or the other," he probed, wistfully.

He found encouragement in her expression and went on. "I was away at
Tech, taking a special course, and they lied about me. I was trying to
make something more of myself than just a lumberjack. And I thought
there