s. The
Captain ripped open the envelope and handed the sheet inside to Ramona.

"Run along in an' read it for me, honey. It's too dark to see here."

The girl ran into the house and lit a lamp. The color washed out of her
face as she read the note.

Come up to the hotel and arrest me, Captain. I held up Yorky, took
his keys, and freed Dinsmore.
JACK ROBERTS

Then, in jubilant waves, the blood beat back into her arteries. That was
why he had resigned, to pay the debt he owed Homer Dinsmore on her
account. He had put himself within reach of the law for her sake. Her
heart went out to him in a rush. She must see him. She must see him at
once.

From the parlor she called to Captain Ellison. "You'd better come in and
read the note yourself, Uncle Jim. It's important."

It was so important to her that before the Captain of Rangers was inside
the house, she was out the back door running toward the hotel as fast as
her lithe limbs could carry her. She wanted to see Jack before his chief
did, to ask his forgiveness for having failed him at the first call that
came upon her faith.

She caught up with the colored boy as he went whistling up the road. The
little fellow took a message for her into the hotel while she waited in
the darkness beside the post-office. To her there presently came
Roberts. He hesitated a moment in front of the store and peered into the
shadows. She had not sent her name, and it was possible that enemies had
decoyed him there.

"Jack," she called in a voice that was almost a whisper.

In half a dozen long strides he was beside her. She wasted no time in
preliminaries.

"We were wrong, Dad and I. I told Uncle Jim to tell you to come to me
... and then your note to him came. Jack, do you ... still like me?"

He answered her as lovers have from the beginning of time--with kisses,
with little joyous exclamations, with eyes that told more than words. He
took her into his arms hungrily in an embrace of fire and passion. She
wept happily, and he wiped away her tears.

They forgot time in eternity, till Ellison brought them back to earth.
He was returning from the hotel with Wadley, and as he passed they heard
him sputtering.

"Why did he send for me, then, if he meant to light out? What in Sam
Hill--?"

Jack discovered himself to the Captain, and incidentally his sweetheart.

"Well, I'll be doggoned!" exclaimed Ellison. "You youn