d a
little and for the first time took in all of the rude appointments of
the room.

"Oh!" she gasped. "I...."

"It's all right, Miss," said Poke Drury, swinging toward her, his hand
lifted as though to stop one in full flight. "You see ... just that end
there is the bar room," he explained nodding at her reassuringly. "The
middle of the room here is the ... the parlour; an' down at that end,
where the long table is, that's the dinin' room. I ain't ever got
aroun' to the partitions yet, but I'm goin' to some day. An' ... Ahem!"

He had said it all and, all things considered, had done rather well with
an impossible job. The clearing of the throat and a glare to go with it
were not for the startled girl but for that part of the room where the
bar and card tables were being used.

"Oh," said the girl again. And then, turning her back upon the bar and
so allowing the firelight to add to the sparkle of her eyes and the
flush on her cheeks, "Of course. One mustn't expect everything. And
please don't ask the gentlemen to ... to stop whatever they are doing on
my account. I'm quite warm now." She smiled brightly at her host and
shivered again.

"May I go right to my room?"

In the days when Poke Drury's road house stood lone and aloof from the
world in Big Pine Flat, very little of the world from which such as Poke
Drury had retreated had ever peered into these mountain-bound
fastnesses; certainly less than few women of the type of this girl had
ever come here in the memory of the men who now, some boldly and some
shyly, regarded her drying herself and seeking warmth in front of the
blazing fire. True, at the time there were in the house three others of
her sex. But they were ... different.

"May I go right to my room?" she repeated as the landlord stood gaping
at her rather foolishly. She imagined that he had not heard, being a
little deaf ... or that, possibly, the poor chap was a trifle slow
witted. And again she smiled on him kindly and again he noted the
shiver bespeaking both chill and fatigue.

But to Poke Drury there had come an inspiration. Not much of one,
perhaps, yet he quickly availed himself of it. Hanging in a dusty corner
near the long dining table, was an old and long disused guest's book,
the official road house register. Drury's wandering eye lighted upon it.

"If you'll sign up, Miss," he suggested, "I'll go have Ma get your room
ready."

And away he scurried on his crutch, casting a last look o