r own thought, "but I've never had much for any of the boys I've
known; they smell too fishy."

This time Winn laughed heartily. "And is your nose the by-road to your
heart?" he asked.

"It may be," she replied, also laughing, "if I have one."

It was the first coquettish word she had so far uttered, and Winn did
not like it.

"That does not sound like you, Mona," he replied soberly, "your greatest
charm, and it is a charm, is sincerity. When you speak that way you
remind me of the ladies in my world, and I do not like them."

"And if I am always truthful," she said, "you will call me simple, won't
you?"

"No, I told you I admired that in you," he said, "but you have not
answered my question, Mona. Have you never had a lover?"

"I have had two or three," she replied again, looking sober, "at least
they said they loved me, but I did not return it."

And as Winn looked at the girlish figure, just showing the rounded
curves of womanhood beneath its close-fitting blue flannel gown, and at
the pansy face with eyes like one of those purple petals, fixed on him,
he, manlike, thought how sweet it would be to moisten them with the dew
of love's light and feel the touch of her velvety lips.

But should he try for that prize, and did he want it, if he could win
it?

The lowering sun had thrown the shadows of the spruce trees adown the
gorge, the wind scarce ruffled the ocean and only the low lullaby of its
undulations crept up the ravine. It was the parting of day and night,
the good-by of sunshine, the peace of summer twilight.

"Now, Mona," he half whispered, as if fearing to scare the mermaids
away, "play 'Annie Laurie'!"

And lost to the world, he watched her bending over and caressing that
old brown fiddle, even as a mother would press her baby's face to her
own, again and once again came that whisper of a love that never dies, a
refrain that holds the pathos of life and parting in its chords, a love
cry centuries old, as sweet as heaven, as sad as death.

"Come, little girl," he said, rising suddenly when only the ocean's
whisper reached his ears, "it's time to go home." And as, clasping her
hand, and in silence leading her out of the gorge, he noticed when one
of the roses she carried from the cave fell among the rocks, she stooped
and picked it up.

CHAPTER XIV

J. MALCOLM WESTON

There is in this land of the free, where all men are created equal (on
paper), a class of financial sharpers, whose