riods. It was all grotesque; it was fantastic, almost
laughable,--had it not concerned him! For Rodaine had been his
father's enemy, and Mother Howard had told him enough to assure him
that Rodaine did not forget. The crazed woman of the graveyards was
Squint's lunatic wife, ready to kill, if necessary, for a husband who
beat her. And the young Rodaine was his son, blood of his blood; that
was enough. It was hours before Fairchild found sleep, and even then
it was a thing of troubled visions.

Streaming sun awakened him, and he hurried to the dining room to find
himself the last lodger at the tables. He ate a rather hasty meal,
made more so by an impatient waitress, then with the necessary papers
in his pocket, Fairchild started toward the courthouse and the legal
procedure which must be undergone before he made his first trip to the
mine.

A block or two, and then Fairchild suddenly halted. Crossing the
street at an angle just before him was a young woman whose features,
whose mannerisms he recognized. The whipcord riding habit had given
place now to a tailored suit which deprived her of the boyishness that
had been so apparent on their first meeting. The cap had disappeared
before a close-fitting, vari-colored turban. But the straying brown
hair still was there, the brown eyes, the piquant little nose and the
prettily formed lips. Fairchild's heart thumped,--nor did he stop to
consider why. A quickening of his pace, and he met her just as she
stepped to the curbing.

"I 'm so glad of this opportunity," he exclaimed happily. "I want to
return that money to you. I--I was so fussed yesterday I did n't
realize--"

"Aren't you mistaken?" She had looked at him with a slight smile.
Fairchild did not catch the inflection.

"Oh, no. I 'm the man, you know, who helped you change that tire on
the Denver road yesterday."

"Pardon me." This time one brown eye had wavered ever so slightly,
indicating some one behind Fairchild. "But I was n't on the Denver
road yesterday, and if you 'll excuse me for saying it, I don't
remember ever having seen you before."

There was a little light in her eyes which took away the sting of the
denial, a light which seemed to urge caution, and at the same time to
tell Fairchild that she trusted him to do his part as a gentleman in a
thing she wished forgotten. More fussed than ever, he drew back and
bent low in apology, while she passed on. Half a block away, a young
man