ak for
fear you would say otherwise. And if it hadn't been you, I believe I
should have died."

"An' if you'd find out, now, that I ain't Will Bransford," said
Sanderson slowly, "what then?"

"That can't be," she said, looking him straight in the eyes, and
holding his gaze for a long time, while she searched his face for signs
of that playful deceit that she expected to see reflected there.

She saw it, evidently, or what was certainly an excellent counterfeit
of it--though Sanderson was in no jocular mood, for at that moment he
felt himself being drawn further and further into the meshes of the
trap he had laid for himself--and she smiled trustfully at him, drawing
a deep sigh of satisfaction and laying her head against his shoulder.

"That can't be," she repeated. "No man could deceive a woman like
that!"

Sanderson groaned, mentally. He couldn't confess now and at the same
time entertain any hope that she would forgive him.

Nor could he--knowing what he knew now of Dale's plans--brutally tell
her the truth and leave her to fight Dale single-handed,

And there was still another consideration to deter him from making a
confession. By impersonating her brother he had raised her hopes high.
How could he tell her that her brother had been killed, that he had
buried him in a desolate section of a far-off desert after taking his
papers and his money?

He felt, from her manner when he had tentatively asked her to consider
the possibility of his not being her brother, that the truth would kill
her, as she had said.

Worse, were he now to inform her of what had happened in the desert,
she might not believe him; she might indeed--considering that he
already had dealt doubly with her--accuse him of being her brother's
murderer!

Again Sanderson groaned in spirit. To confess to her would be to
destroy her; to withhold the confession and to continue to impersonate
her brother was to act the role of a cad.

Sanderson hesitated between a choice of the two evils, and was lost.
For she gave him no time for serious and continued thought. Taking him
by an arm she led him into a room off the sitting-room, shoving him
through the door laughingly.

"That is to be your room," she said. "I fixed it up for you more than
a month ago. You go in there and get some sleep. Sleep until dusk.
By that time I'll have supper ready. And then, after supper, there are
so many things that I want to say to you. So get a good slee