igh against the rock walls made Wanda gasp and
ask him if he thought that she was going to take in boarders. There
were camp stools, there were rugs. A tiny sheetiron camp stove came
one day, and when Wanda put her rosy face through the screen that Wayne
had substituted for her old one, her nostrils were assailed by the
odours of boiling coffee, frying bacon, sizzling apples and burning
bread.

There were strings of onions, and potatoes popping out of their bag
before the summer died; a side of bacon swung against a ham where Wayne
had driven a dead branch into a crevice in the rocks; there was a table
he had constructed rudely but securely; there were books on it; there
were candles burning everywhere.

"Because," he had laughed at her surprise, "winter will come one of
these days, and do you think that I'm not going to see you until it's
gone again? Oh, I suppose I'll have to be down at the lower pastures
with the stock, but I'll get up here now and again. Then when a fine
day comes and you want a long ski ride, you'll know where to come,
won't you, Wanda? Where a hot luncheon will be waiting for you? And,
who knows," he whispered, "maybe we'll spend our honeymoon here
sometime!"

Shandon at first had thought of going to Garth Conway, of asking him
frankly what the deal was in which he and Sledge Hume and Mr. Leland
were interested, and if they were counting upon needing the Bar L-M
water as Ruf Ettinger had told him they were. But in this matter also
had he altered his first quick decision. He had always liked Conway,
at least, without thinking a great deal about it he supposed he had,
for the very simple reason that they were cousins and had, in a way,
grown up together. But on the other hand they were men essentially
unlike, in no respect congenial. They had never been confidential;
were they the only two men in the world it is doubtful if one would
have carried his personal thoughts and emotions to the other. That
little reserve which had always existed, scarcely noted by Wayne
Shandon, was suddenly a wall between them. This was Conway's business;
if he chose to keep it his secret from his cousin, Wayne Shandon was
not the man to ask him to talk about it.

Moreover, perhaps even more important now than that consideration,
there was another. Leland and Hume had at least been upon the point of
going into this matter just before Arthur's death, and they had taken
Arthur into their confidence. Perha