d
never run wild in the hills as her mother had done through her girlhood;
she had never been particularly interested in all of this sprawling
ruggedness. Now she had a hundred eager questions; she saw the shining
splendour of the solitudes through King's eyes; she turned to him with
full confidence for the name of a flower, the habit of a bird, even
though the latter, unseen among the trees, had only announced himself by
a half-dozen enraptured notes.

Yesterday, surrendering her volatile self to a very natural and quite
innocent feminine instinct, Gloria had fully determined to parade Mark
King before her envious friends as very much her own property. It was
merely a bit of the game, the old, old game at which she, being richly
favoured by nature, was as skilful as a girl of eighteen or nineteen
could possibly be. In the eternal skirmish she was an enterprising young
savage with many scalps dangling from her triumphant belt. The petted
pompadour of poor Archie, the curly locks of Teddy, the stiff black
brush of Mr. Gratton were to have an added fellow in King's trophy. Then
she had caught a word between her father and his friend; had heard
Honeycutt mentioned and a ride to Coloma, and on the break of the
instant had determined with a young will which invariably went
unthwarted, that high adventure was beckoning her. A ride on horseback
through the mountains with a man who had stirred her more than a little,
who filled her romantic fancies with picturesque glamour, who was on a
quest of which she knew ten times more than he had any idea she knew.
And that quest itself! Pure golden glamour everywhere.

Hence, some few minutes afterward, in a cosy nook of the verandah while
the others danced, the moon and Gloria were serenely victorious. King,
once assured that the long ride was not too hard for her, saw no
slightest reason for objecting to her coming; he did not think of all of
that which would mean so much to Ben's wife--the conventions and what
would people say. Conventions do not thrive in such regions as the high
Sierra. Ben, to whom King mentioned the thing, looked at it quite as did
his friend. Gloria would be in good hands and ought to have a corking
good time; he wished he could get away to go along. So King telephoned
to San Francisco, arranged to have three thousand dollars--in cash--sent
immediately to him at Coloma, and to-day fancied himself strictly
attending to business with an undivided mind.

"I know