ed this modern disciple of feudalism;
"the line is drawn just as sharply now as it was when Jack was a bond
thrall and his master was a swashbuckling baron."

"Who draws it? the thrall or the baron?"

The question opened up a new view of the matter, and Brockway took time
to think about it.

"I'm not sure as to that," he said, doubtfully. "I've always taken it
for granted it was the baron; but perhaps it's both of them."

"You may be very sure there are two sides to that shield, as to all
others," she asserted. "But tell me more about your own trouble. Is it
altogether impossible? Does the--the young woman think as you do?"

"It is; and I don't know what she thinks. I've never asked her, you
know."

"You haven't? And still you sit here on this log and eat cold chicken
and tell me calmly that it's hopeless! I said awhile ago that you were
very daring, but I'll retract in deference to that."

"It's not exactly a lack of courage," Brockway objected, moved to defend
himself when he would much rather have done something else. "There is
another obstacle, and it is insurmountable. She is rich--rich in her own
right, I'm told; and I am a poor man."

"How poor?"

"Pitifully so, from her point of view. So poor that if I gave her a
five-room cottage and one servant, I could do no more."

"Many a woman has been happy with less."

"Doubtless, but they were not born in the purple."

"Some of them were, if by that you mean born with money to throw away. I
suppose you might say that of me."

Brockway suddenly found the Denver eating-house cake very dry, but he
could not take his eyes from her long enough to go and get a drink from
the rill at the log-end.

"But you would never, marry a poor man," he ventured to say.

"Wouldn't I? That would depend very much upon circumstances," she
rejoined, secure in the assurance that her secret was now double-locked
in a dungeon of Brockway's own building. "If it were the right thing to
do I shouldn't hesitate, though in that case I should go to him as
destitute as the beggar maid did to King Cophetua."

Brockway's heart gave a great bound and then seemed to forget its
office.

"How is that? I--I don't understand," he stammered.

Gertrude gazed across at the shining mountain and took courage from its
calm passivity.

"I will tell you, because I promised to," she said. "I, too, have money
in my own right, but it is only in trust, and it will be taken from me
if I do not marry