mer?"

"Say what?"

"Our marriage, I mean."

"Why get married, then? What's the good of all that fuss about it? I
don't go anything upon a minister puddling round in my affairs. What's
the difference, anyhow? We understand each other. Isn't that enough?
Pshaw, Hilma, I'M no marrying man."

She looked at him a moment, bewildered, then slowly she took his
meaning. She rose to her feet, her eyes wide, her face paling with
terror. He did not look at her, but he could hear the catch in her
throat.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a long, deep breath, and again "Oh!" the back
of her hand against her lips.

It was a quick gasp of a veritable physical anguish. Her eyes brimmed
over. Annixter rose, looking at her.

"Well?" he said, awkwardly, "Well?"

Hilma leaped back from him with an instinctive recoil of her whole
being, throwing out her hands in a gesture of defence, fearing she knew
not what. There was as yet no sense of insult in her mind, no outraged
modesty. She was only terrified. It was as though searching for wild
flowers she had come suddenly upon a snake.

She stood for an instant, spellbound, her eyes wide, her bosom swelling;
then, all at once, turned and fled, darting across the plank that
served for a foot bridge over the creek, gaining the opposite bank and
disappearing with a brisk rustle of underbrush, such as might have been
made by the flight of a frightened fawn.

Abruptly Annixter found himself alone. For a moment he did not move,
then he picked up his campaign hat, carefully creased its limp crown and
put it on his head and stood for a moment, looking vaguely at the ground
on both sides of him. He went away without uttering a word, without
change of countenance, his hands in his pockets, his feet taking great
strides along the trail in the direction of the ranch house.

He had no sight of Hilma again that evening, and the next morning he
was up early and did not breakfast at the ranch house. Business of the
League called him to Bonneville to confer with Magnus and the firm of
lawyers retained by the League to fight the land-grabbing cases. An
appeal was to be taken to the Supreme Court at Washington, and it was to
be settled that day which of the cases involved should be considered as
test cases.

Instead of driving or riding into Bonneville, as he usually did,
Annixter took an early morning train, the Bakersfield-Fresno local at
Guadalajara, and went to Bonneville by rail, arriving there at tw