jump, ten thousand dollars.'

Helen fairly gasped. Despite her father's talk of the extravagant sums
he meant to wrest from the bowels of the earth, she had never dreamed
of so princely an income for them. Longstreet, however, merely shook a
smiling head.

'You're a real friend, John,' he said. 'But here we stick. And, when
you come down to dollars and cents, I'll eat your new hat for you if I
can't make ten times your ten thousand in the first year.'

Before such amazing confidence Carr stalled. But he did not give up;
it wasn't his habit of thought to relinquish anything which he had
undertaken. Still for a little he was silent, studying his man. Again
Helen was staring out through the open door.

'Some one is coming,' she announced. Then, her tone quickening, 'It is
Mr. Howard; I knew he would be riding over before night. I know his
horse,' she explained hastily, flushing a trifle under Carr's eyes
which told her that he was surprised that she could tell who it was at
such a distance. 'It is the horse he rode the first time we ever saw
him. There is some one with him. It looks like----'

She did not say whom it looked like. Carr and Longstreet looked out.
The second rider was a woman; her horse was not Sanchia Murray's white
mare, but none the less they all knew that with Alan Howard came
Sanchia. Carr's heavy brows gathered blackly. The flush died out of
Helen's face and her lips tightened. Longstreet sprang up and went to
the door.

'If it is Mrs. Murray,' he called back, something like triumph in his
excited voice, 'and if she is coming here--why, then maybe there was a
mistake after all.'

'She is not coming here!' cried Helen hotly. 'Papa, I will not have
that woman in the house. After the way she has cheated you, fooled
you, lied to you----'

'Come, come, my dear,' chided Longstreet. 'No one must be judged and
condemned unheard. And remember that she is coming with Mr. Howard.'

Helen looked hopelessly at Carr. There were times when she utterly
despaired of her father. But she could find comfort in the thought
that if that Sanchia woman sought to perpetrate any more of her
villainy and deceit, she was going to stand at her father's side
through all of it. Meantime the two riders came on swiftly. As they
drew up at the door Helen saw that Howard looked worried and ill at
ease and that Sanchia Murray's eyes were red as though with copious
weeping. Whereas Helen sniffed audibly.