em."

The girl hastily interrupted. She had not feared for herself, but she
knew fear for the indomitable man she had nursed back to life. "Won't
you sit down, Mr. Bannister? Since you don't approve our literature,
perhaps we can find some other diversion more to your taste." She smiled
faintly.

The man turned in smiling divination of her purpose, and sat down to
play with her as a cat does with a mouse.

"Thank y'u, Miss Messiter, I believe I will. I called to thank y'u for
your kindness to my cousin as well as to inquire about you. The word
goes that y'u pulled my dear cousin back when death was reaching mighty
strong for him. Of course I feel grateful to y'u. How is he getting
along now?"

"He's doing very well, I think."

"That's ce'tainly good hearing," was his ironical response. "How come he
to get hurt, did y'u say?"

His sleek smile was a thing hateful to see.

"A hound bit me," explained the sheepman.

"Y'u don't say! I reckon y'u oughtn't to have got in its way. Did y'u
kill it?"

"Not yet."

"That was surely a mistake, for it's liable to bite again."

The girl felt a sudden sickness at his honeyed cruelty, but immediately
pulled herself together. For whatever fiendish intention might be in his
mind she meant to frustrate it.

"I hear you are of a musical turn, Mr. Bannister. Won't you play for
us?"

She had by chance found his weak spot. Instantly his eyes lit up. He
stepped across to the piano and began to look over the music, though not
so intently that he forgot to keep under his eye the man on the lounge.

"H'm! Mozart, Grieg, Chopin, Raff, Beethoven. Y'u ce'tainly have the
music here; I wonder if y'u have the musician." He looked her over with
a bold, unscrupulous gaze. "It's an old trick to have classical music on
the rack and ragtime in your soul. Can y'u play these?"

"You will have to be the judge of that," she said.

He selected two of Grieg's songs and invited her to the piano. He knew
instantly that the Norwegian's delicate fancy and lyrical feeling had
found in her no inadequate medium of expression. The peculiar emotional
quality of the song "I Love Thee" seemed to fill the room as she played.
When she swung round on the stool at its conclusion it was to meet a
shining-eyed, musical enthusiast instead of the villain she had left
five minutes earlier.

"Y'u CAN play," was all he said, but the manner of it spoke volumes.

For nearly an hour he kept her at the piano, and wh