ish I could
make you understand that this affair isn't entirely of my own seeking,
Farwell!"

His companion yawned. "Awkward to be so damned fascinating, isn't it?
Look out--one of these days some of your fair friends are going to band
themselves together, and catch you unawares, and marry you, my boy."

"One isn't a Mormon, worse luck," grunted the other.

CHAPTER XXV

It was a part of Channing's new policy of caution with regard to
Jacqueline that took him occasionally to Storm in the role of casual
caller, especially now that the older girl was not there to disconcert
him with her oddly observant gaze. Here he frequently found other
callers, young men who since Professor Thorpe's entertainment had
discovered that the distance between Storm and their homes, by
automobile and even by train, was a negligible trifle.

These young men Jacqueline referred to, with innocent triumph and
evident justice, as "victims."

"I _told_ Jemmy there was no need of going away from home to get beaux,"
she said complacently to Channing. "Here I've sat, just like a spider in
a web, and--look at them all! To say nothing of you," she added, with a
little gasp at her own daring.

Channing frowned slightly. He was not altogether pleased with the
numbers and the frequency of the victims; a fact which added distinctly
to Jacqueline's pride in them. But she never allowed her duties as
hostess nor her instincts as coquette to interfere with any engagements
at the Ruin.

It was Channing's custom, when he called at Storm, to bid her a
nonchalant, not to say indifferent, farewell, and repair by devious ways
to the ravine; where some moments later he welcomed a very different
Jacqueline from the demure young person he had left--ardent, glowing,
very eager to atone to him for the enforced restraint of the previous
encounter. The coquette in Jacqueline was only skin deep.

One day, arriving at Storm at a belated lunch hour, the hospitable
negress who opened to him led him back at once into the dining-room; and
there he found a guest quite different from Jacqueline's victims. He was
a singular-looking old man, clad in worn butternut jeans; an uncouth,
uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a
peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife,
and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted
Channing with a courteous, "Howdy, stranger!"

"No, no, darter"--he conti