that a whole community should so lose its sense of
values as to encourage even tacitly what was virtually theft. She did
not want to pass judgment upon Goldbanks, for she distrusted her horizon
as narrow. But surely right was right and wrong wrong. Without a stab of
pain she could not think of Jack Kilmeny as engaged in this illicit
traffic.

In her heart she was afraid. Bleyer was a man to be trusted, and in
effect he had said that her friend was a highgrader. Even to admit a
doubt hurt her conscience as a disloyalty, but her gropings brought no
certainty of his innocence. It would be in keeping with the man's
character, as she read it, not to let fear of the consequences hold him
from any course upon which he was determined. Had he not once warned her
in his whimsical smiling way that she would have to make "a heap of
allowances" for him if she were to remain his friend? Was it this to
which he had referred when he had told her he was likely to disappoint
her, that a man must live by the code of his fellows and judge right and
wrong by the circumstances? Explicitly he had given her to understand
that his standards of honesty would not square with hers, since he lived
in a rough mining camp where questions had two sides and were not to be
determined by abstract rule.

As for Joyce, the charges against Kilmeny did not disturb her in the
least. He might be all they said of him and more; so long as he
interested her that was enough. Just now her head was full of the young
man. In the world of her daydreams many suitors floated nebulously. Past
and present she had been wooed by a sufficient number. But of them all
not one had moved her pulses as this impossible youth of the unmapped
desert West had done. Queer errant impulses tugged at her
well-disciplined mind and stormed the creed of worldliness with which
she had fenced her heart.

A stroll to view the sunset had been arranged by the young people up
what was known as Son-of-a-Gun Hill. Moya walked of course with Captain
Kilmeny, her betrothed. Joyce saw to it that Verinder was paired with
India, Jack Kilmeny falling to her lot. Since India knew that her escort
was eager to get with Miss Seldon, she punished his impatience by
loitering far behind the others.

During the past few days Jack had pushed his tentative suit boldly but
lightly. He understood that Joyce was flirting with him, but he divined
that there had been moments when the tide of her emotion had swept