ause I hoped to meet you
on equal ground."

"You're a bold man--in more ways than one." She shook her head as in
rebuke of his temerity.

"But you don't believe I'm a thief," said he, conclusively.

"No; I have made public denial of it." She laughed lightly, but a
little nervously, an uneasiness over her that she could not define.

"An angel has risen to plead for Alan Macdonald, then!"

"Why should you need anybody to plead for you if there's no truth in
their charges? What is a man like you doing in this wild place,
wasting his life in a land where he isn't wanted?"

They had turned into a path that branched beyond the lanterns. The
white gravel from the river bars with which it was paved glimmered
among the shadowy shrubs. Macdonald unclasped his plaid from his
shoulders and transferred it to hers. She drew it round her, wrapping
her arms in it like a squaw, for the wind was coming chill from the
mountains now.

"It is soon said," he answered, quite willingly. "I am not hiding
under any other man's name--the one they call me by here is my own. I
was a 'son of a family,' as they say in Mexico, and looked for
distinction, if not glory, in the diplomatic service. Four years I
grubbed, an under secretary in the legation at Mexico City, then
served three more as consul at Valparaiso. An engineer who helped put
the railroad through this country told me about it down there when the
rust of my inactive life was beginning to canker my body and brain. I
threw up my chance for diplomatic distinction and came off up here
looking for life and adventure, and maybe a copper mine. I didn't find
the mine, but I've had some fun with the other two. Sometimes I'd like
to lose the adventure part of it now--it gets tiresome to be hunted,
after a while."

"What else?" she asked, after a little, seeing that he walked slowly,
his head up, his eyes far away on the purple distances of the night,
as if he read a dream.

"I settled in this valley quite innocently, as others have done,
before and after me, not knowing conditions. You've heard it said that
I'm a rustler--"

"King of the rustlers," she corrected.

"Yes, even that. But I am not a rustler. Everybody up here is a
rustler, Miss Landcraft, who doesn't belong to, or work for, the
Drovers' Association. They can't oust us by merely charging us with
homesteading government land, for that hasn't been made a statutory
crime yet. They have to make some sort of a charge against u