lease'? That sounds interesting. But is
it the truth?"

Her perseverance began, in spite of him, to puzzle him. What in all
the world of worlds did she want of him? Also, and again in spite of
him, he began to wonder what sort of female being this was.

"And so my name is really the only thing commendable about me?" she
went on. "My nose isn't really pug, Mr. Drennen."

She crinkled it up for his inspection, turning sideways so that he
might study her profile, then challenging his eyes gaily with her own.

"It is said to be my worst feature," she continued gravely. "And after
all, don't you think one's nose is like one's gown in that it's true
effect lies in the way one wears it?"

"How old are you?" he said curiously, the ice of him giving the first
evidence of thaw.

"Less than three score and ten in actual years," she told him. "Vastly
more than that in wisdom. Who's getting impertinent now?"

He hadn't said half a dozen sentences to a woman in half a dozen years.
But then he hadn't seen a woman of her class and type in nearly twice
that length of time. Besides, a week of enforced idleness in his
dugout, of blank inactivity, had brought a new sort of loneliness. A
bit surprised at what he was doing, a bit amused, not without a feeling
of contempt for himself, he let the bars down. He leaned back a little
upon his rock, caught up a knee in his clasped hands, thus easing the
ache in his side, and set his eyes to meet hers searchingly.

"This is an odd place for a girl like you, Ygerne," he said
meditatively.

"Is it? And why?"

"Because," he answered slowly, "so far as I know, only two kinds of
people ever come this way. Some are human hogs come to get their feet
into a trough of gold; some are here because there is such a thing as
the law outside and it has driven them here."

"But surely some come just through a sense of curiosity?"

"Curiosity is too colourless a motive to beckon or drive folks out
here."

"Why are you asking me a question like this? You have succeeded in
making it rather plain that you feel no interest whatever in me."

"I am allowing myself, for the novelty of the thing, to talk nonsense,"
he told her drily. "You seemed insistent upon it."

"So that's it? Well, I at least can answer a question. Two motives
are to thank or to blame for my being here. One," she said coolly, her
eyes steady upon his, "has beckoned, as you put it; the other has
driven. One is the