he stole another
side-glance. She had a sudden, swift insight into the power and vigor of
the man--the inner man.

"That the girl he loves," she continued softly, "is a thief, makes no
difference to Jo."

"Remember, Jo is only a boy--younger than you in all but years."

"Only a boy, it is true, but with the faith and love of a man."

He started from his chair and came up close to her.

"Answer me," he said, his eyes narrowing to slits. "Do you love Jo Gary?"

A sort of paralysis seemed to grip her, and she felt helpless to move her
eyes from his. Her lips were slightly parted and he could feel the pull of
her nerves. For a moment she looked like a startled deer, quivering at the
approach of man, with no place to run.

Then she recovered.

"Ask Jo," she said defiantly, and sped from the room.

"Jo didn't tell me how much he had confided in Kurt," she thought. "What a
wee world it is! I can't see how, with all the shuffling billions of
people, the same two, once parted, should ever meet. I believe I was wrong
about Kurt. For a moment I was almost afraid of him."

Kurt gazed into the fire, his gray eyes alert and a soft smile on his
lips. He had not been misled. He had clearly read an answer in the young
eyes looking into his own.

"She doesn't love Jo," he thought, and the knowledge was quickly darkened
by the remembrance of what it would mean to the boy-lover.

CHAPTER X

"Jo!" called Pen, running down the road as she spied him driving away in a
lightweight mountain wagon.

Quickly he reined in the pair of prancing horses.

"What 'tis, Miss Penny Ante? Isn't it great that I am back to stay?"

"Indeed it is. Where are you going and may I go, too?"

"Over to Westcott's, and I'd love to have you go with me."

"I'll have to get a furlough and a hat. Just wait a moment."

She found Kurt and asked his permission with all the pretty pleading of a
child in her voice. Her face was singularly young; her eyes like a
mirror.

"I've never ridden in a wagon," she said breathlessly, seeing that his
expression wasn't as forbidding as usual. "And I'll come back. Can't you
see I _want_ to come back?"

Something sweet dawned in his eyes.

"Yes;" he said, a note of exultation sounding in his voice with the
knowledge that his last stand of resistance to long-held theories was
giving away before some new force, powerful and overwhelming. "You may go.
I wish I were driving instead of Jo, but--"

He stood wa