or you might not understand, but I do
really need a friend right now. Did you ever need one?"

To the girl alone and under suspicion, however kind the friends who were
puzzled over her situation, conscious that too many favors were not to
be asked of the good-souled Junius Brutus Ponk, the young farmer seemed
the only one to whom she could turn. And she had the more readily halted
her car to wait for him because she had already begun to weave a romance
in homespun about this splendid young agriculturist and the good-hearted
country girl, Thelma Ekblad. He, himself, was impersonal to her.

"I'm always needing friends--and I'm more glad than you could know to
have you even think of me in your needs. But everybody turns to York
Macpherson. He's the lodestar for every Sage Brush compass," Joe said,
looking earnestly at Jerry.

"I'm on my way to the old Teddy Bear's house, your Fishing Teddy," Jerry
declared, "and I thought you would go with me. I don't want to go
alone."

"Let me take this machinery to the men--they are waiting for it to start
to work--and I'll be glad to go," Joe answered her.

The gray car followed the big wagon down the trail to the deep bend of
the Sage Brush in the angle of which Joe's ranch-house stood; and the
load of machinery was quickly given over to the workmen. As Joe seated
himself in the little gray car Jerry said:

"You are wondering why, and too polite to ask why, I go to Hans
Theodore's. Let me tell you." Then she told him of her dazed wanderings
down the river road two months before, and of her meal near old Teddy's
shack.

"He brought me fried fish on a cracked plate, and buttermilk in a silver
drinking-cup--a queer pattern with a monogram on the side. The next
morning I saw another cup exactly like that on the buffet in the
Macpherson dining-room. They told me there should be two of them. One
they found was suddenly missing. Later it suddenly was not missing. York
said their like was not to be had this side of old 'Castle Cluny' on the
ancient Kingussie holding of the invincible Clan Macpherson's forebears.
So this must have been the same cup. It was on the morning after you
called and took the old Teddy Bear home with you that the missing cup
reappeared. You remember he was shambling around the grounds the night
before, waiting for you?"

"Yes, I remember," Joe responded, gravely.

"Meantime Laura Macpherson lost her purse. It was found in my hand-bag.
I believe now that the