ouraging fact that Old
Bots, a shambling derelict who had lost an eye when Wayne Shandon was
quite young, was gentle and trustworthy. After that, wherever he went
abroad, and he travelled all over the countryside, he rode in the cart,
steering Old Bots this way and that with much shouting, prodding and
jerking of reins. And he drove where perhaps no man had ever driven
before. His smiling confidence in Old Bots, in his rattling, creaking
old cart, in his own ability as a driver were all characteristic of his
joyous optimism.

In the meantime Wayne Shandon had at last seen Wanda. His reasons for
making no effort to see her immediately after his heated interview with
Martin Leland were clear in his own mind; he expected to find that they
had been equally as clear to her, and that she would have understood.
But the Wanda he found one riotously brilliant morning was rather cool,
distant, unapproachable.

He had ridden up on the cliffs which towered at the upper end of the
Echo Creek ranch, from which he could look down the valley and see her
when she left the house, as he felt confident that she would. He saw
her when it was not yet nine o'clock. She was riding out across the
valley toward the cliffs opposite at the north end of the valley,
toward the cave she had found there. Shandon marked the course she was
taking, swung his horse across a ridge and hastened to the meeting with
her. He came upon her as she dismounted near the big cedar against the
rocks.

"Wanda!" he called softly.

She turned toward him, her face paler, he thought, than it should be.
He slipped from the saddle and came swiftly toward her, his eyes
shining, his arms out. Then she raised her hand, stopping him.

"Good morning, Wayne," she said quietly.

"Wanda," he cried, a little perplexed. "What is it? Aren't you glad
to see me?"

She smiled, put down the parcel she had been carrying, and perched upon
a big broken boulder forcing her eyes to look merrily into his. And
what she read in his look sent a quick, glad flutter into her heart.
But she did not let him know it.

"Glad to see you?" she replied gaily. "Why, of course I am. But,"
teasingly, a little cruelly, "aren't you the least bit afraid?"

"Afraid of what?" he asked blankly.

"Of papa!" she retorted, her dimples playing because she meant to look
as though she was quite a heart whole maiden, and because the very ring
of his earnest voice swept away all the uncertainty t