lready."

"How's that?"

"We're offered a price for him--if it still holds good. That's why
we've come to Paradise--an' no other reason, believe me!"

"How much?"

"Thousand."

There was a stir in the crowd.

"That's some price for a bronco," said Huntington, with an assumed
indifference.

"It sure is--if you're talkin' about a _bronco_," retorted the
cow-puncher.

There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were turned again upon
the golden horse, standing motionless but alert, as if keenly alive to
all that passed. The common ponies around him stamped, and champed
their bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides
remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and contempt of a
captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.

Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth's eyes, and knew that
her foreboding had not been without reason.

"And who's paying a thousand dollars for him?" asked Huntington.

"Haig's his name, Philip Haig," answered Larkin. "Know him?"

If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the Paradisians
he now had his revenge, though much to his surprise, in the
extraordinary effect produced by his simple announcement. The smiles
faded from the faces assembled around him; significant glances were
exchanged; and there followed a silence so deep that the murmur of the
Brightwater could be heard quite clearly across the meadows. Then
there was a rustling movement in the crowd, and every face, as if by a
common impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.

Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but there could be
no mistake in what she read in Huntington's black countenance. She was
not only frightened, but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness
and crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately gentle,
with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She had seen him always
tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly he loved with all the best there
was in him. But now she perceived the other side of his character,
which she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly, on
account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy passion glowed
in his eyes; his features were distorted by an expression of mingled
cunning and hate; and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between
his shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the face of the
cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself in hand, and masked his
passions under