ow what you're going to
do."

"Gale! Won't you have a little sense? Come along home with me, like a
good fellow, and I'll talk things over with you just as long as you
like."

"You'll talk things over with me right here, and as long as _I_ like,"
he retorted savagely. "Every time I ask you to marry me you've got
some new excuse."

"It's shameful for you to act in this way, Gale." She spoke low and
rapidly to her enraged suitor. De Spain alone knew it was to keep her
humiliation from his own ears, and he made no effort to follow her
quick, pleading words. The moment was most embarrassing for two of the
three involved. But nothing that Nan could say would win from her
cousin any reprieve.

"When you came back from school I told Duke I was going to marry you.
He said, all right," persisted her cousin stubbornly.

"Gale Morgan, what Uncle Duke said, or didn't say, has nothing
whatever to do with _my_ consent."

"I told you I was going to marry you."

"Does that bind me to get married, when I don't want to?"

"You said you'd marry me."

Nan exploded: "I never, never said so in this world." Her voice shook
with indignation. "You know that's a downright falsehood."

"You said you didn't care for anybody else," he fairly bellowed. "Now
I want to know whether you'll marry me if I take you over to Sleepy
Cat to-morrow?"

"No!" Nan flung out her answer, reckless of consequence. "I'll never
marry you. Let me go home."

"You'll go home when I get through with you. You've fooled me long
enough."

Her blood froze at the look in his face. "How dare you!" she gasped.
"Get out of my way!"

"You damned little vixen!" He sprang forward and caught her by the
wrist. "I'll take the kinks out of you. You wouldn't marry me your
way, now you'll marry me mine."

She fought like a tigress. He dragged her struggling into his arms.
But above her half-stifled cries and his grunting laugh, Morgan heard
a sharp voice: "Take your hands off that girl!"

Whirling, with Nan in his savage arms, the half-drunken mountaineer
saw de Spain ten feet away, his right hand resting on the grip of his
revolver. Stunned, but sobered by mortal danger, Morgan greeted his
enemy with an oath. "Stand away from that girl!" repeated de Spain
harshly, backing the words with a step forward. Morgan's grasp
relaxed. Nan, jerking away, looked at de Spain and instantly stepped
in front of her cousin, on whom de Spain seemed about to draw.

"What are you do