tors."

"Then you did not believe he was a thief?" she asked, her eyes
softening.

"It would ill become me to accuse your father or my directors," he
answered diplomatically.

She was quick enough to detect the suggestion of moral superiority
in his tone, but woman enough to forgive it. "You're no friend of
Windibrook," she said, "I know."

"I am not," he replied frankly.

"If you would like to see my popper, I can manage it," she said
hesitatingly. "He'll do anything for me," she added, with a touch of her
old pride.

"Who could blame him?" returned Masterton gravely. "But if he is a free
man now, and able to go where he likes, and to see whom he likes, he may
not care to give an audience to a mere messenger."

"You wait and let me see him first," said the girl quickly. Then, as the
sound of sleigh-bells came from the road outside, she added, "Here he
is. I'll get your clothes; they are out here drying by the fire in
the shed." She disappeared through a back door, and returned presently
bearing his dried garments. "Dress yourself while I take popper into the
shed," she said quickly, and ran out into the road.

Masterton dressed himself with difficulty. Although circulation was now
restored, and he felt a glow through his warmed clothes, he had been
sorely bruised and shaken by his fall. He had scarcely finished dressing
when Montagu Trixit entered from the shed. Masterton looked at him with
a new interest and a respect he had never felt before. There certainly
was little of the daughter in this keen-faced, resolute-lipped man,
though his brown eyes, like hers, had the same frank, steadfast
audacity. With a business brevity that was hurried but not unkindly, he
hoped Masterton had fully recovered.

"Thanks to your daughter, I'm all right now," said Masterton. "I need
not tell you that I believe I owe my life to her energy and courage, for
I think you have experienced what she can do in that way. But YOU have
had the advantage of those who have only enjoyed her social
acquaintance in knowing all the time what she was capable of," he added
significantly.

"She is a good girl," said Trixit briefly, yet with a slight rise in
color on his dark, sallow cheek, and a sudden wavering of his steadfast
eyes. "She tells me you have a message from your directors. I think I
know what it is, but we won't discuss it now. As I am going directly to
Sacramento, I shall not see them, but I will give you an answer to take
to t