ess highgrading at any cost, even if
some of the more flagrant offenders had to be sent to the penitentiary.
That such a fate could befall Jack Kilmeny was unthinkable. Yet what
more likely than that the managers should choose him for an example if
they could prove him guilty?

The dusk had fallen over the hills and the lights were glimmering out
from the town below through the growing darkness. Captain Kilmeny walked
beside his slim, tall, worshipful sweetheart with a heavy heart. She was
his promised bride. That she would keep faith he did not doubt. But the
progress that he made in winning her love was so little that he seemed
to himself to be marking time. The shadow of his vagabond cousin still
lay between them.

CHAPTER XVI

ONE MAID--TWO MEN

Jack saw to it that he and Joyce followed the others down the trail at a
very leisurely pace. The early night of the Rockies was already cutting
them off from the rest of the world. Captain Kilmeny and his betrothed
could be seen as shadows growing every minute more tenuous. India and
her escort were already lost in the descending darkness.

It was the first time that the Goldbanks miner had ever been alone with
Miss Seldon. He meant to make the most of his chance. Her loveliness
sang its way through his alert, masterful eyes into the blood of the
man. Where else under heaven could a woman be found with such a glory of
amber extravagance for hair, with such exquisitely turned scarlet lips
in so fine-textured colorless a skin of satin? She moved with the
lightness of perfect health, the long, graceful lines of her limbs
breaking into new curves at every step. Sinuous and supple, she was
exquisitely feminine to the finger tips.

They talked little, and that irrelevantly. In both of them the tide of
emotion ran full. Each was drawn by the subtle irresistible magnet of
sex attraction. When their eyes met it was but for an instant. A
shyness, delirious and delightful, ran like a golden thread through the
excitement which burned their blood.

"We ... must hurry." Joyce breathed deep, as if she had been running.

"Why must we?" he demanded. "This is my hour. I claim it."

"But ... they're getting ahead of us."

"Let them." He gave her his hand to help her down a steep place in the
trail. Their fingers laced, palm clinging to palm.

"You ... mustn't," she protested.

"Mustn't I?"

"No-o."

The note of faintness was in her voice. Courage flooded him in
triu