Then, as though in doubt as to whether he had seen correctly, he
tried it again.

"Which do you mean?" he asked, puzzled.

"The one in red. Now, she----"

The Westerner snorted irrepressibly.

"What's the matter with you?" inquired the Easterner, looking on him
with suspicious eyes.

The other choked his laugh in the middle, and instantly assumed an
expression of intense solemnity. It was as though a candle had blown out
in the wind.

"Beg pardon. Nothing," he asserted with brevity of enunciation. "Go on."

The girl in red was standing tiptoe on a bench under one of the big
lanterns. She was holding her little palm slantwise over the chimney,
and by blowing against it was trying to put out the lamp. Her face was
very serious and flushed. Occasionally the lamp would flare up a little,
and she would snatch her hand away with a pretty gesture of dismay as
the uprising flame would threaten to scorch it. A group of interested
men surrounded and applauded her. Two on the outside stood off the
proprietor of the dance-hall. The proprietor was objecting.

"Well, then, just look at that girl, I say," the Easterner went on.
"She's as pretty and fresh and innocent as a mountain flower. She's
having the time of her young life, and she just thinks it means a good
time and nothing else. Some day she'll find out it means a lot else. I
tell you, it's awful!"

The Westerner surveyed his friend's flushed face with silent amusement.
The girl finally succeeded in blowing the light out, and everybody
yelled.

"Same old fellow you were in college, aren't you, Bert?" he said,
affectionately; "succouring the distressed and borrowing other people's
troubles. What can you do?"

"Do, do! What can any man do? Take her out of this! appeal to her better
nature!"

Bert started impulsively forward to where the girl--with assistance--was
preparing to jump from the bench. The miner caught his sleeve in alarm.

"Hold on, don't make a row! Wait a minute!" he begged; "she isn't worth
it! There, now listen," as the other sank back expectantly to his former
position. His bantering manner returned. "You and the windmills," he
breathed, in relief. "I'll just shatter your ideals a few to pay for
that scare. You shall now hear a fact or so concerning that pretty,
innocent girl--I forget your other adjective. In the first place, she
isn't in the mountain-flower business a little bit. Her name is Anne
Bingham, but she is more popularly known as Bis