I reached the top, panting like the purr of the _Yellow Peril_--my
automobile--when it gets warmed up and going smoothly, I discovered that
it was Edith Loroman sitting placidly, with a camera on her knees, doing
things to the internal organs of the thing. I don't know much about
cameras, so I can't be more explicit.

"If it isn't Ellie, looking for all the world like the _Virginian_ just
stepped down from behind the footlights!" was her greeting. "Where in the
world have you been, that you haven't been over to see us?"

"You must know that the palace of the King is closed against the
Carletons," I, said, and I'm afraid I said it a bit crossly; I hadn't
climbed that unmerciful butte just to bandy commonplaces with Edith
Loroman, even if we were old friends. There are times when new enemies are
more diverting than the oldest of old friends.

"Well, you could come when Uncle Homer is away--which he often is," she
pouted. "Every Sunday he drives over to Kenmore and pokes around his
miners and mines, and often Terence and Beryl go with him, so you could
come--"

"No, thank you." I put on the dignity three deep there. "If I can't come
when your uncle is at home, I won't sneak in when he's gone. I--how does
it happen you are away out here by yourself?"

"Well," she explained, still doing things to the camera, "Beryl came out
here yesterday, and made a sketch of the divide; I just happened to see
her putting it away. So I made her tell me where she got that view-point,
and I wanted her to come with me, so I could get a snap shot; it _is_
pretty, from here. But she went over to the mines with Mr. Weaver, and
I had to come alone. Beryl likes to be around those dirty mines--but I
can't bear it. And, now I'm here, something's gone wrong with the thing,
so I can't wind the film. Do you know how to fix it, Ellie?"

I didn't, and I told her so, in a word. Edith pouted again--she has a
pretty mouth that looks well all tied up in a knot, and I have a slight
suspicion that she knows it--and said that a fellow who could take an
automobile all to pieces and put it together again ought to be able to fix
a kodak. That's the way some women reason, I believe--just as though cars
and kodaks are twin brothers.

Our conversation, as I remember it now, was decidedly flat and dull.
I kept thinking of Beryl being there the day before--and I never knew; of
her being off somewhere to-day with that Weaver fellow--and I knew it and
couldn't do a