telephone rang again, and Jack had to go in and report
the present extent of the fire, and tell just where and just how fast
it was spreading, and what was the direction of the wind. The
interruption steadied him, gave him time to think.

Since the girl knew him, and knew the circumstances of his flight, and
since the boys had turned on him, Jack argued with himself that he
might just as well tell her what little there was to tell. There was
nothing to be gained by trying to keep the thing a secret from her.
Besides, he craved sympathy, though he did not admit it. He craved the
privilege of talking about that night to some one who would
understand, and who could be trusted. Marion Rose, he felt, was the
only person in the world he could tell. He could talk to her--Lord,
what a relief that would be! He could tell her all about it, and she
would understand. Her sympathy at that moment seemed the most precious
thing in the world.

So he went outside and sat down again on the bench, and told her the
exact truth about that night; how it had started in drunken foolery,
and all the rest of it. He even explained the exact route he had taken
home so as to come into town apparently from Pasadena.

"Well, _what_ do you know about _that_!" Marion murmured several times
during the recital. And Jack found the phrase soothing whenever she
uttered it, and plunged straightway into further revelations of his
ebullient past.

"I suppose," he ventured, when he could think of nothing more to tell
and so came back to the starting point, "I ought to beat it outa here
while the beating's good. I can't go back--on account of mother. I
could hotfoot it up to Canada, maybe...."

"Don't you do it!" Marion wound the string of her vanity bag so
tightly round and round her index finger that her pink, polished nail
turned purple. She next unwound the string and rubbed the nail
solicitously. "Just because we're down there at Toll-Gate doesn't mean
you aren't safe up here. Why, you're safer, really. Because if any one
got track of you, we'd hear of it right away--Kate and I walk to town
once in a while, and there's hardly a day passes that we don't see
somebody to talk to. Everybody talks when they meet you, in this
country, whether they know you or not. And I could come up right away
and tell you. Having a bandit treed up here on top would make such a
hit that they'd all be talking about it. It certainly would be keen to
listen to them and know m