you, that Courtlandt carried him on his back for five miles! The Indian
had fallen afoul a wounded tiger, and the beaters were miles off. I've
been watching. They haven't even spoken to each other. Courtlandt's
probably forgotten all about the incident, and the Indian would die rather
than embarrass his savior before strangers."

"Your friend, then, is quite a hero?"

What was the matter with Nora's voice? Abbott looked at her wonderingly.
The tone was hard and unmusical.

"He couldn't be anything else, being Dick Courtlandt's boy," volunteered
Harrigan, with enthusiasm. "It runs in the family."

"It seems strange," observed Nora, "that I never heard you mention that
you knew a Mr. Courtlandt."

"Why, Nora, there's a lot of things nobody mentions unless chance brings
them up. Courtlandt--the one I knew--has been dead these sixteen years. If
I knew he had had a son, I'd forgotten all about it. The only graveyard
isn't on the hillside; there's one under everybody's thatch."

The padre nodded approvingly.

Nora was not particularly pleased with this phase in the play. Courtlandt
would find a valiant champion in her father, who would blunder in when
some fine passes were being exchanged. And she could not tell him; she
would have cut out her tongue rather. It was true that she held the
principal cards in the game, but she could not table them and claim the
tricks as in bridge. She must patiently wait for him to lead, and he, as
she very well knew, would lead a card at a time, and then only after
mature deliberation. From the exhilaration which attended the prospect of
battle she passed into a state of depression, which lasted the rest of the
afternoon.

"Will you forgive me?" asked Celeste of Courtlandt. Never had she felt
more ill at ease. For a full ten minutes he chatted pleasantly, with never
the slightest hint regarding the episode in Paris. She could stand it no
longer. "Will you forgive me?"

"For what?"

"That night in Paris."

"Do not permit that to bother you in the least. I was never going to
recall it."

"Was it so unpleasant?"

"On the contrary, I was much amused."

"I did not tell you the truth."

"So I have found out."

"I do not believe that it was you," impulsively.

"Thanks. I had nothing to do with Miss Harrigan's imprisonment."

"Do you feel that you could make a confidant of me?"

He smiled. "My dear Miss Fournier, I have come to the place where I
distrust even myself."

"Forg