h his eyes resting appealingly upon
the driver, he inquired: "It is possible, is it not, Senor?"

Curiously enough, this apparently proper request was responsible for
changing the whole aspect of things. For, keenly desirous to oblige
him, though she was, there was something in the stranger's eyes as they
now rested upon her that made her feel suddenly shy; a flood of new
impressions assailed her: she wanted to evade the look and yet foster
it; but the former impulse was the stronger, and for the first time she
was conscious of a growing feeling of restraint. Indeed, some inner
voice told her that it would not be quite right for her to leave the
stage. True, she belonged to Cloudy Mountain Camp where the conventions
were unknown and where a rough, if kind, comradery existed between the
miners and herself; nevertheless, she felt that she had gone far enough
with a new acquaintance, whose accent, as well as the timbre of his
voice, gave ample evidence that he belonged to another order of society
than her own and that of the boys. So, hard though it was not to accede
to his request and, at the same time, break the monotony of her journey
with a few minutes of berry-picking with him in the fields, she made
no move to leave the stage but answered the questioning look of the
obliging driver with a negative one. Whereupon, the latter, after
declaring to the young Californian that the stage was late as it was,
called to his horses to show what they could do in the way of getting
over the ground after their long rest.

The young man's face clouded with disappointment. For two hundred yards
or more he spoke not a word, though he spurred his horse in order to
keep up with the now fast-moving stage. Then, all of a sudden, as the
silence between them was beginning to grow embarrassing, the Girl made
out the figure of a man on horseback a short distance ahead, and uttered
an exclamation of surprise. The stranger followed the direction of the
Girl's eyes and, almost instantly, it was borne in upon them that the
horseman awaited their coming. The Girl turned to speak, but the tender,
sorrowful expression that she saw on the young man's face kept her
silent.

"That is one of my father's men," he said, somewhat solemnly. "His
presence here may mean that I must leave you. The road to our ranch
begins there. I fear that something may be wrong."

The Girl shot him a look of sympathetic inquiry, though she said
nothing. To tell the truth