's your
specialty."

"I don't go about with my eyes shut, certainly," said Hill.

"I'm glad of that," Dot said. "I would rather you knew about it.
Only"--her voice quivered again--"I don't know how to tell you."

"You are sure you would rather I knew?" he said.

"Yes." She spoke with decision. "You've got to know if--if--" She broke
off.

"If we are going to be married?" he suggested.

"Yes," whispered Dot.

Hill walked a few paces in silence. Then, unexpectedly, he drew the
nervous little hand he held through his arm. "Well, you needn't tell
me any more," he said. "I know the rest."

She started and stood still. There was quick fear in the look she threw
him. "You mean Jack told you--"

"No, I don't," said Hill. "Jack has never yet told me anything I couldn't
have told him ages before. I knew from the beginning. It was the fellow
they called Buckskin Bill, wasn't it?"

She quivered from head to foot and was silent.

Hill went on ruthlessly. "First, by a stroke of luck, he saved you from
death by snake-bite. He always had the luck on his side, that chap. I
should have caught him but for that. I'd got him--I'd got him in the
hollow of my hand. But you"--for the first time there was a streak of
tenderness in his speech--"you were a new chum then--you held me up.
Remember how you covered his retreat when we came up? Did you really
think I didn't know?"

She uttered a sobbing laugh. "I was very frightened, too. I always was
scared at the law."

Hill nodded. He also was grimly smiling.

"But you dared it. You'd have dared anything for him that day. He always
got the women on his side."

She winced a little.

"It's true," he asserted. "I know what happened--as well as if I'd seen
it. He made love to you in a very gallant, courteous fashion. I never
saw Buckskin Bill, but I believe he was always courteous when he had
time. And he promised to come back, didn't he--when he'd given up being
a thief and a swindler and had turned his hand to an honest trade? All
that--for your sake!... Yes, I thought so. But, my dear child, do you
really imagine he meant it--after all these years?"

She looked at him with a piteous little smile. "He--he'd be worth
having--if he did, wouldn't he?" she said.

"I wonder," said Hill.

He waited for a few moments, then laid his hand upon her shoulder with
a touch that seemed to her as heavy as the hand of the law.

"I can't help thinking," he said, "that you'd find a plain man