desire to get my feet into the golden trough, the
other to get my body out of the way of the law. Your hypothesis seems,
in my case as in the others, to be correct, Mr. Drennen."

In spite of him he stared at her a little wonderingly. For himself he
gauged her years at nineteen. He was rather inclined to the suspicion
that she was lying to him in both particulars. But something of the
coolness of her regard, its vague insolence, something in the way she
carried her head and shoulders, her whole sureness of poise, the
intangible thing called personality in her tempered like fine steel,
made his suspicion waver. She was young and good to look upon; there
was the gloriously fresh bloom of youth upon her; and yet, were it not
for the mere matter of sex, he might have looked upon her as a gay and
utterly unscrupulous young adventurer of the old type, the kind to bow
gallantly to a lady while wiping the stain of wet blood from a knife
blade.

"You are after gold . . . and the law wants you back there in the
States?" he demanded with quiet curiosity.

"I am after gold and the law has sought me back there in the States,"
she repeated after him coolly.

"The law has long arms, Ygerne."

"It has no arms at all, Mr. Drennen. It has a long tail with a
poisonous sting in it."

"What does it want you for?" He was making light of her now, his
question accompanied by a hard, cynical look which told her that she
could say as much or as little as she chose and he'd suit himself in
the extent of his credulity. "Were you the lovely cashier in an ice
cream store? And did you abscond with a dollar and ninety cents?"

"Don't you know of Paul Bellaire?" she flung at him angrily.

"I have never met the gentleman," he laughed at her, pleased with the
flush which was in her cheeks.

"He died long before you were born," she said sharply. "If you talked
with men you would know. He was my grandfather. We of the blood of
Paul Bellaire are not shop girls, Mr. Drennen."

"Oho," sneered Drennen. "We are in the presence of gentry, then?"

"You are in the presence of your superior by birth if not in all other
matters," she told him hotly.

"We, out here, don't believe much in the efficacy of blue blood," he
said contemptuously.

"The toad has little conception of wings!" she gave him back, in the
coin of his own contempt. "Queer, isn't it?"

He laughed at her, more amused than he had been heretofore and more
interested.