her arctics upon her warmly stockinged feet, drew her
hood down over her ears, strapped on her skis and slipped on her
mittens before she left the kitchen. From the back door which in
summer was three feet above ground she pushed her way out upon the
level snow. Then, through a white world of silence she moved quietly
through the clear, crisp morning.

She arrived early at the cliffs, but already Shandon, although he had
travelled further, was before her. For the last quarter of a mile she
had travelled in the deeper tracks, which his broader skis and heavier
weight had made. Already he had gone ahead of her up the great cedar,
as she saw by the branches from which he had scraped the snow. And
when she came to the top and peeped into the cave she saw him piling
wood upon the fire he had blazing to welcome her.

"God bless you," he said tenderly. "You came."

"Of course I came," she answered. "Now tell me, Wayne. What is it?"

First he made her draw off her sweater and arctics and take the stool
he placed at the fire for her.

"Wanda," he began, at last, "I've got something to tell you that's
going to be hard telling. I have hoped all along that things would
smooth themselves out for us, that in due time your father would come
to see that neither he nor any other man has the right to stand in the
way of our happiness. But now, dear, there is no hope of that.
Matters are bad enough now, God knows. And they are going to get
worse. Do you love me very much, Wanda?"

"You know that I do," she answered simply.

"So much that you could cleave to me through everything? Even when the
unpleasantness which already exists between your father and me grows
into positive, hard, open opposition? On my part as well as his?"

"Is it so bad as that, Wayne?" she asked, her eyes darkening a little.

"Yes," he answered bitterly. "It is worse than you know. You will
find it as hard to believe as I found it."

"Tell me." She looked up at him bravely enough, but he knew how this
thing hurt her, and how it was going to hurt her when he told
everything. Hastily, to have it over with, he repeated Dart's story
and told of the quarrel with Garth.

"I believe," he said slowly, "that Dart told me the truth throughout.
I don't know how he found it out, but in part I know he was right.
Arthur mortgaged the Bar L-M to your father for twenty-five thousand
dollars. You know how I went away then, how I authorised Garth to act