e
he seemed to have quite forgotten his exhaustion and his pain. It was
wonderful how cheerful he had been while she was in sight.

In all this Berrie did him an injustice. He had been keenly conscious,
during every moment of the time, not only of his bodily ills, but of
Berrie, and he had kept a brave face in order that he might prevent
further questioning on the part of a malicious girl. It was his only way
of being heroic. Now that the crisis was passed he was quite as much of a
wreck as ever.

A new anxiety beset her. "I hope they won't happen to meet father on the
trail."

"Perhaps I should go with them and warn him."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she wearily answered. "Old Mrs. Belden will
never rest till she finds out just where we've been, and just what we've
done. She's that kind. She knows everything that goes on."

He understood her fear, and yet he was unable to comfort her in the only
way she could be comforted. That brief encounter with Siona Moore--a girl
of his own world--had made all thought of marriage with Berea suddenly
absurd. Without losing in any degree the sense of gratitude he felt for
her protecting care, and with full acknowledgment of her heroic support
of his faltering feet, he revolted from putting into words a proposal of
marriage. "I love her," he confessed to himself, "and she is a dear,
brave girl; but I do not love her as a man should love the woman he is to
marry."

A gray shadow had plainly fallen between them. Berea sensed the change in
his attitude, and traced it to the influence of the coquette whose
smiling eyes and bared arms had openly challenged admiration. It saddened
her to think that one so fine as he had seemed could yield even momentary
tribute to an open and silly coquette.

IX

FURTHER PERPLEXITIES

Wayland, for his part, was not deceived by Siona Moore. He knew her kind,
and understood her method of attack. He liked her pert ways, for they
brought back his days at college, when dozens of just such misses lent
grace and humor and romance to the tennis court and to the football
field. She carried with her the aroma of care-free, athletic girlhood.
Flirtation was in her as charming and almost as meaningless as the
preening of birds on the bank of a pool in the meadow.

Speaking aloud, he said: "Miss Moore travels the trail with all known
accessories, and I've no doubt she thinks she is a grand campaigner; but
I am wondering how she would stand such a trip