noticed it before--had
a peculiar richness and brilliancy that seemed to reflect the luster
of Sunnysides' golden hide. They stood there entrancing his artist-eye
with their perfect harmony of line and color; and the last thin rays
of the setting sun bathed horse and girl in a golden light--an
atmosphere in which they glowed like one of Titian's mellowed
canvases.

"Don't move, please!" he exclaimed.

But Marion did not hear, or did not heed. She dropped her hand, and
glided toward him, while he watched her, curious and rapt. Perhaps it
was because he saw her through that golden glow, perhaps because his
nerves were a little unsteady in the reaction from the strain they had
undergone, that she made a singular appeal to his imagination. He
fancied that for all the fineness of her figure, the exquisite poise
of her small head, the cameo-like delicacy of her face, there was
something in her as wild, untamed, and elemental as the heart of
Sunnysides.

Thus she moved slowly past him, and passing gave him a long and steady
look, with an unfathomable expression in her eyes,--an expression
neither of anger nor of bitterness nor of disgust nor of anything he
might have expected after all he had done that day. He turned, and
watched her until she had disappeared in the crowd around the
stagecoach; and with her went out the last rays of the sun.

"Well, I'll be damned!" said Philip Haig.

With a shake of his shoulders, as if to throw off some unwelcome
weight upon them, he turned again to take up his business with the
gaping cow-punchers.

CHAPTER V

"HE SHALL TELL ME!"

Doctor Wilson, arriving from Tellurium on the third day after the
encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much
to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's
bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but
Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's
self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and somebody must pay for it.

First of all it was Claire that paid; then Marion. He did not mean to
be disagreeable to them, but never having cultivated self-restraint he
had none of it now to ease the days of his convalescence. He filled
the house with his clamor, and required as much attention as an ailing
child. There were just two ways to keep him quiet. Claire soothed him
when she sat at his bedside, with one of his huge "paws" held in her
tiny hands; and Marion f