her delightful company."

"Did he tell you about his girl here?" Tillhurst asked, a trifle
maliciously, maybe.

"Of course, I didn't," I broke in. "We don't tell all we know when we go
East."

"Nor all you have done in the East when you come back home, evidently,"
Tillhurst spoke significantly. "I've never heard him mention your name
once, Miss Melrose."

"Has he been flirting with some one, Mr. Tillhurst? He promised me
faithfully he wouldn't." Her tone took on a disappointed note.

"I'll promise anybody not to flirt, for I don't do it," I cried. "I came
home and found this young educator trying to do me mischief with the
little girl I told you about the last time I saw you. Naturally he
doesn't like me."

All this in a joking manner, and yet a vein of seriousness ran through
it somewhere.

Rachel Melrose was adroit.

"We won't quarrel," she said sweetly, "now we do meet again, and when I
go down to Springvale to visit your aunt, as you insisted I must do,
we'll get all this straightened out. You'll come and take tea with us of
course. Mr. Tillhurst has promised to come, too."

The young man looked curiously at me at the mention of Rachel's visit to
Springvale. A group of politicians broke in just here.

"We can't have you monopolize 'the handsome giant of the Neosho' all the
time," they said, laughing, with many a compliment to the charming young
monopolist. "We don't blame him, of course, now, but we need him badly.
Come, Baronet," and they hurried me away, giving me time only to thank
her for the invitation to dine with her.

At the Teft House letters were waiting for me. One from my father asking
me to visit Governor Crawford and take a personal message of some
importance to him, with the injunction, "Stay till you do see him." The
other was a fat little envelope inscribed in Marjie's handwriting.
Inside were only flowers, the red blossoms that grow on the vines in the
crevices of our "Rockport," and a sheet of note paper about them with
the simple message:

"Always and always yours, Marjie."

Willing or unwilling, I found myself in the thick of the political
turmoil, and had it not been for that Indian raiding in Northwest
Kansas, I should have plunged into politics then and there, so strong a
temptation it is to control men, if opportunity offers. It was late
before I could get out of the council and rush to my room to write a
hurried but loving letter to Marjie. I had to be brief to get it int