o be shocked into a better appreciation of the conventions?"

There was a small Pintsch globe in the hollow of the "umbrella roof,"
with its single burner turned down to a mere pea of light. Lidgerwood's
answer was to reach up and flood the platform with a sudden glow of
artificial radiance. The chorus of protest was immediate and
reproachful.

"Oh, Mr. Lidgerwood! don't spoil the perfect moonlight that way!" cried
Miss Doty, and the others echoed the beseeching.

"You'll get used to it in a minute," asserted Lidgerwood, in
good-natured sarcasm. "It is so dark here in the canyon that I'm afraid
some of you might fall overboard or get hit by the rocks, or something."

"The idea!" scoffed Miss Carolyn. Then, petulantly, to Van Lew: "We may
as well go in. There is nothing more to be seen out here."

Lidgerwood looked to Eleanor for his cue, or at least for a whiff of
moral support. But she turned traitor.

"You can do the meanest things in the name of solicitude, Howard," she
began; but before she could finish he had reached up and turned the gas
off with a snap, saying, "All right; anything to please the children."
After which, however, he spoke authoritatively to Van Lew and Jefferis.
"Don't let your responsibilities lean out over the railing, you two.
There are places below here where the rocks barely give a train room to
pass."

"_I'm_ not leaning out," said Miss Brewster, as if she resented his
care-taking. Then, for his ear alone: "But I shall if I want to."

"Not while I am here to prevent you."

"But you couldn't prevent me, you know."

"Yes, I could."

"How?"

The special was rushing through the darkest of the high-walled clefts in
the lower part of the canyon. "This way," he said, his love suddenly
breaking bounds, and he took her in his arms.

She freed herself quickly, breathless and indignantly reproachful.

"I am ashamed for you!" she panted. And then, with carefully calculated
malice: "What if Herbert had been looking?"

"I shouldn't care if all the world had been looking," was the stubborn
rejoinder. Then, passionately: "Tell me one thing before we go any
farther, Eleanor: have you given him the right to call me out?"

"How can you doubt it?" she said; but now she was laughing at him again.

There was safety only in flight, and he fled; back to his desk and the
work thereon. He was wading dismally through a thick mass of
correspondence, relating to a cattleman's claim for stock killed, a