Cissy's bright eyes softened. She knelt beside him, her soft
breath fanning his hair, and lifted him gently to a sitting position.

"Oh, I've done it before," she laughed, as she read his wonder, with
his gratitude, in his eyes. "The horse was already stiff, and you
were nearly so, by the time I came up to you and got"--she laughed
again--"the OTHER Chinaman to help me pull you out of that hole."

"I know I owe you my life," he said, his face flushing.

"It was lucky I was there," she returned naively; "perhaps lucky you
were chasing me."

"I'm afraid that of the many who would run after you I should be the
least lucky," he said, with an attempt to laugh that did not, however,
conceal his mortification; "but I assure you that I only wished to have
an interview with your father,--a BUSINESS interview, perhaps as much in
his interest as my own."

The old look of audacity came back to her face. "I guess that's what
they all came here for, except one, but it didn't keep them from
believing and saying he was a thief behind his back. Yet they all wanted
his--confidence," she added bitterly.

Masterton felt that his burning cheeks were confessing the truth of
this. "You excepted one," he said hesitatingly.

"Yes--the deputy sheriff. He came to help ME."

"You!"

"Yes, ME!" A coquettish little toss of her head added to his confusion.
"He threw up his job just to follow me, without my knowing it, to see
that I didn't come to any harm. He saw me only once, too, at the house
when he came to take possession. He said he thought I was 'clear grit'
to risk everything to find father, and he said he saw it in me when he
was there; that's how he guessed where I was gone when I ran away, and
followed me."

"He was as right as he was lucky," said Masterton gravely. "But how did
you get here?"

She slipped down on the floor beside him with an unconscious movement
that her masculine garments only made the more quaintly girlish, and,
clasping her knee with both hands, looked at the fire as she rocked
herself slightly backward and forward as she spoke.

"It will shock a proper man like you, I know," she began demurely, "but
I came ALONE, with only a Chinaman to guide me. I got these clothes from
our laundryman, so that I shouldn't attract attention. I would have got
a Chinese lady's dress, but I couldn't walk in THEIR shoes,"--she looked
down at her little feet encased in wooden sandals,--"and I had a long
way to walk. But even