"

"You're so good!"

"After I've been around you a while. It's catching." He tucked in the
dust robe, without looking at her.

But she looked at him, as she started, with that swift, shy glance of
hers, and felt the pink tint her cheeks beneath the tan. He was much in
her thoughts, this slender brown man with the look of quiet competence
and strength. Ever since that night in the kitchen, he had impressed
himself upon her imagination. She had fallen into the way of comparing
him with Tom Dixon, with her own brother, with Buck Weaver--and never to
his disadvantage.

He talked with a drawl. He walked and rode with an air of languid ease.
But the man himself, behind the indolence that sat upon him so
gracefully, was like a coiled spring. Sometimes she could see this force
in his eyes, when for the moment some thought eclipsed the gay good
humor of them. Winsome he was. He had already won her father, even as he
had won her. But the touch of affection in his manner never suggested
weakness.

From the porch Tom Dixon watched her departure sullenly. Since he could
not have her, he let himself grow jealous of the man who perhaps could.
And because he was what he was--a small man, full of vanity and
conceit--he must needs make parade of himself with another girl in the
role of conquering squire. Larrabie smiled as the young fellow went off
for a walk in obviously confidential talk with Anna Allan, but he
learned soon that it was no smiling matter.

Half an hour later, the girl came flying back along the trail the two
had taken. Catching sight of Keller, she ran across to him, plainly
quivering with excitement and fluttering with fears.

"Oh, Mr. Keller--I've done it now! I didn't think----I thought--"

"Take it easy," soothed the young man, with one of his winning smiles.
"Now, what is it you have done?" Already his eyes had picked out Dixon
returning, not quite so impetuously, along the trail.

"I told him about the man in Phyllis' room."

Larrabie's eyes narrowed and grew steely. "Yes?"

"I told him--I don't know why, but I never could keep a secret. I made
him promise not to tell. But he is going to tell the boys. There he
comes now. And I told Phyllis I wouldn't tell!" Anna began to cry,
miserably aware that she had made a mess of things.

"I just begged him not to tell--and he had promised. But he says it's
his duty, and he's going to do it. Oh, Mr. Keller--if Mr. Weaver is
there they will hurt him, and I'll