to the old man, and carelessly to Flip, he walked to the door.

"If you're going to take the Monterey road, I can show you a short cut
to it," said Flip, with a certain kind of shy civility.

The paternal Fairley groaned. "That's it; let the chickens and the ranch
go to thunder, as long as there's a stranger to trapse round with; go
on!"

Lance would have made some savage reply, but Flip interrupted. "You know
yourself, Dad, it's a blind trail, and as that 'ere constable that kem
out here hunting French Pete, couldn't find it, and had to go round by
the canyon, like ez not the stranger would lose his way, and have to
come back!" This dangerous prospect silenced the old man, and Flip and
Lance stepped into the road together. They walked on for some moments
without speaking. Suddenly Lance turned upon his companion.

"You didn't swallow all that rot about the diamond, did you?" he asked,
crossly.

Flip ran a little ahead, as if to avoid a reply.

"You don't mean to say that's the sort of hog wash the old man serves
out to you regularly?" continued Lance, becoming more slangy in his ill
temper.

"I don't know that it's any consarn o' yours what I think," replied
Flip, hopping from boulder to boulder, as they crossed the bed of a dry
watercourse.

"And I suppose you've piloted round and dry-nussed every tramp and dead
beat you've met since you came here," continued Lance, with unmistakable
ill humor. "How many have you helped over this road?"

"It's a year since there was a Chinaman chased by some Irishmen from the
Crossing into the brush about yer, and he was too afeered to come out,
and nigh most starved to death in thar. I had to drag him out and start
him on the mountain, for you couldn't get him back to the road. He was
the last one but YOU."

"Do you reckon it's the right thing for a girl like you to run about
with trash of this kind, and mix herself up with all sorts of rough and
bad company?" said Lance.

Flip stopped short. "Look! if you're goin' to talk like Dad, I'll go
back."

The ridiculousness of such a resemblance struck him more keenly than a
consciousness of his own ingratitude. He hastened to assure Flip that he
was joking. When he had made his peace they fell into talk again, Lance
becoming unselfish enough to inquire into one or two facts concerning
her life which did not immediately affect him. Her mother had died on
the plains when she was a baby, and her brother had run away from home