you--but you! Oh--oh--I
_trusted_ you to know!"

"Forgive me," he begged. "I did not mean to hurt you. Perhaps I was
thinking of the romance and the glamour which this had stripped away
from things here. I think my mind was running on that."

"No," she denied. "You were thinking like that little woman across the
river with the fright and horror in her big eyes. You were thinking that
I am guilty, and that there can be but one answer to the presence of
that man in my camp last night. His notorious name goes before him like
a blight."

"You'll have to move your camp now," as if seeking delicately to avoid
the ghost that seemed to have risen between them; "this place will have
unpleasant associations."

"Yes; it cannot be reconsecrated and purified."

He stood as if prepared to leave. Agnes placed her hand upon his
shoulder, looking with grieved eyes into his face.

"Will you stay a little while," she asked, "and hear me? I want to part
from you with your friendship and respect, for I am entitled to both, I
am worthy of both--if ever."

"Let me move your stool out into the sun," he suggested. "There's a
chill in the wind today. Of course I'll stay, and we'll have some more
of that excellent coffee before I go. You must teach me how you make it;
mine always turns out as muddy as a bucket of Missouri River water."

His cheerfulness was like that which a healthy man displays at the
bedside of a dying friend--assumed, but helpful in its way. He placed
her folding canvas stool in the sun beyond the shadow of the tent and
found a box for himself. Thus arranged, he waited for her to speak.

"Still, I am not sure of what I protested in regard to your friendship
and respect," said she after a little brooding silence. "I am a fraud,
taken at the best, and perhaps a criminal."

Dr. Slavens studied her face as she paused there and looked away, as if
her thoughts concentrated beyond the blue hills in the west.

"My name is not Horton," she resumed, facing him suddenly. "It is Gates,
and my father is in the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth."

"But there was no call for you to tell me this," he protested softly.

"Yes, every reason for it," she averred. "The fabric of all my troubles
rests on that. He was president of a bank--you remember the scandal,
don't you? It was nation-wide."

He nodded.

"I spoke to you once of the ghosts of money. They have worried me for
four years and more, for nothing but the ghosts are l