er
cheek, thus obliterating another rivulet that had ceased to flow tears
and was merely wet and itchy.

"If you please, ma'am, you can search me." Lance looked at her
innocently. "I didn't bring any lock with me, and I didn't bring any
door with me. But I've got some screws and three nails and--lots of
good intentions."

"Good intentions are very rare in this country," said Mary Hope, and
made meaningless marks on the bare tabletop with a blunt pencil.

Lance heard a twang of Scotch in the "very rare" which pleased him.
But he kept his position by the doorway, and he continued bashfully
turning his big hat round and round against his chest,--though the
action went oddly with the Lorrigan look and the athletic poise of
him. "Yes, ma'am. Quite rare," he agreed.

"In fact, I don't believe there is such a thing in the whole Black Rim
country," stated Mary Hope, plainly nonplussed at his presence and
behavior.

"Could I show you mine?" Lance advanced a step. He was not sure, at
that moment, whether he wanted to go with the play. Mary Hope was
better looking than when he had seen her last. She had lost a good
deal of the rusticity he remembered her to have possessed, but she was
either too antagonistic to carry on the farce, or she was waiting for
him to show his hand, to betray some self-consciousness. But the fact
that she looked at him straight in the eyes and neither frowned nor
giggled, set her apart from the ordinary range-bred girl.

"You talk like a country peddler. I'm willing to accept a sample, and
see if they are durable. Though I can't for the life of me see why
you'd be coming here with good intentions."

"I'd be mending a lock on a door. Is this the door, ma'am? And is this
the lock?"

Since the door behind him was the only door within five miles of them,
and since the lock dangled from a splintered casing, Mary Hope almost
smiled. "It is a door," she informed him. "And it is a lock that has
been broken by a Lorrigan."

She was baiting him, tempting him to quarrel with her over the old
grudge. Because she expected a reply, Lance made no answer whatever.
He happened to have a dozen or so of nails in his coat pocket,
left-overs from his assiduous carpentry on the house being builded for
her comfort. The screws he possessed were too large, and he had no
hammer. But no man worries over a missing hammer where rocks are
plentiful, and Lance was presently pounding the lock into place, his
back to Mary Ho