t suppose you're needed
very much."

"That's what the business men are saying," he told her, sarcasm in his
dry tone.

"I don't mean it that way," she hastened to amend. "You've done us a
great service--we'll never be able to pay you----"

"There isn't any pay involved," he interposed, almost roughly. "That's
what's worrying those nits around the square, they say they can't carry
a marshal's pay with business going to the devil since the town's
closed. Somebody ought to tell them. There never will be any bill."

"You're too generous," she said, a little spontaneous warmth in her
voice.

"Maybe I can live it down," he returned.

"It's such a lovely cool night I couldn't stay in," she chatted on,
still laboring to be natural and at ease, not deceiving him by her
constraint at all, "after such a hard day fussing with that old paper.
We missed an issue the week--last week--we're getting out two in one
this time. Why haven't you been in? you seem to be in such a hurry
always."

"I wanted to spare you what you can't see in the dark," he said, the
vindictive spirit of Ascalon's insanity upon him.

"What I can't see in the dark?" she repeated, as if perplexed.

"My face."

"You shouldn't say that," she chided, but not with the hearty sincerity
that a friend would like to hear. "Are you going back to town?"

"I'll ride with you," he granted, feeling that for all her friendly
advances the shadow of his taint lay between them.

They were three miles or more from town, the road running as straight as
a plumbline before them. A little way they jogged on slowly, nothing
said. Rhetta was the first to speak.

"What made you run away from me that day I wanted to speak to you, Mr.
Morgan?"

"Did you want to, or were you just--_did_ you want to speak to me that
day, Miss Thayer?" Morgan's heart began to labor, his forehead to sweat,
so hard was the rebirth of hope.

"And you turned right around and walked off!"

"You can tell me now," he suggested, half choking on the commonplace
words, the tremor of his springing hope was so great.

"I don't remember--oh, nothing in particular. But it looks so strange
for us--for you--to be dodging me--each other--that way, after we'd
_started_ being friends before everybody."

"Only for the sake of appearances," he said sadly. "I hoped--but you ran
away and hid for a week, you thought I was a monster."

Foolish, perhaps, to cut down the little shoot of hope again, when a
gentle