m, and
our climbers. They are going down like a string of mountain sheep."

Genevieve placed the baby in his aunt's outstretched arms and went to
look into the abyss through the field glasses. Isobel drew her father
away, out of earshot of the down-peering group of men. She stopped
behind the tent, which Gowan had pitched part way up the slope of the
ridge.

"You want to talk with me about Lafe, honey?" surmised Knowles, as the
girl started to speak and hesitated.

Her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she raised her shyly lowered eyes and
looked up at him with a clear, direct gaze. "Yes, Daddy. He--he loves
me, and I--love him."

"That so?" said Knowles. His eyes contracted. It was his only betrayal
of the wrench she had given the tender heart within his tough
exterior. "Well, I figured it was bound to come some day. I've been
lucky not to lose you any time the last four years."

"You--you do not say anything about him, Daddy."

"Haven't you cut him out of the herd?" he dryly replied. "That's
enough for me, long as I know he's your choice and is square."

"He has nothing; he is very poor."

"He's got the will to work. He'll get there, with you pushing on the
reins. That's how I size him up."

"But, Daddy, he told me he had been bad, very bad."

Knowles searched the girl's face, with a sudden up-leaping of
concern--that vanished as quickly before what he saw in her clear
eyes.

"Might have expected it of you, honey. You stand by him. You've got
sense enough to know what it means when a man thinks enough of a girl
to tell her the wrong things he has done. I was wild, too, when I was
a youngster. There was a girl I thought enough of to tell. She wasn't
your kind, honey. It came near sending me to the devil for good. You
know better. No girl ought to be fool enough to hitch up with a man to
reform him. But if he has already taken a brace and straightened the
kinks out of himself, that's different."

"He has come up, Daddy--out of the depths."

Knowles only half caught her meaning. "Sure he climbed up. That proves
he has the grit and the nerve. He had proved that even better, going
down at the other place. Put any man down there, and he'd make a try
to get out. No, the real test was his going back down again. He might
have come up just for himself. But going down again--that's the proof
of what's in him; that's what proves he's white!"

"Dear Daddy!... But I'm afraid. He thinks he has been too bad ever
to--to ma