g over her eyelids.

"You'd better let me bring up a horse and take you home," Lance urged,
the caressing note creeping into his voice.

"Oh, no! I can't! I--what do I care how I get home? But if your father
won't take the money--You don't _know!_ The whole Rim talks and
gossips until I wish I were dead! And I can't go on using the
schoolhouse--and Tom Lorrigan says if I don't--" She was crying at
last, silently, miserably, her face hidden behind her hands.

"He'll take the money." Lance, after an indeterminate minute while he
watched her, laid his hand lightly on her shoulder. "I'll see that dad
takes it. And I'll give you a bill of sale that ought to shut the
Black Rim mouths. I'm a Lorrigan and I'm not going to apologize for
the blood that's in me, but I want you to know that if I had been home
on the night of the Fourth the Lorrigans wouldn't have done the rotten
cheap thing they did."

Mary Hope heard him tearing a leaf out of his memorandum book, looked
up at him while he wrote rapidly. Without any comment whatever he gave
her the paper, went up to where the hired horse stood, and coaxed it
down through the Slide. Quickly, with the deftness that told of
lifelong intimacy with horses and saddles, he set her own saddle on
the hired horse, while Mary Hope read the terse bill of sale that set
forth the legal "Ten dollars and other valuable considerations," and
was signed "Thomas Lorrigan, per L. M. Lorrigan." It all seemed very
businesslike, and heartened her so much that she was willing to be
nice to Lance Lorrigan. But Lance remained strictly neutral.

"I'll lead him up the Slide for you," he said unemotionally when the
horse was ready. "After he's over that, I think you'll be all right;
you're a good rider. And you need not feel under any obligations then
to the Lorrigans. I was practically through with the horse, anyway,
and it will be no trouble at all to drive by your place and get him
to-morrow."

"I can lead him up--" Mary Hope began, but Lance had already turned
the horse and started him up the Slide, so there was nothing for her
to do but follow.

At the top she gave him the money bag, which he took without any words
whatever on the subject. He held the horse until she had mounted, made
sure that she was all right, chilled by his perfect politeness her
nervous overture toward a more friendly parting, lifted his hat and
turned immediately to go back down the Slide.

Mary Hope glanced back over her s