or Bud. Thank you, Jack. I always
knew you was square."

Polly's sincere praise of his "squareness" was the sharpest thrust
possible at Payson's guilty conscience. Well, he resolved to come as
near being square and level as he could. He had told half-truths to
Bud and Polly; he would present the situation to Echo as a possible,
though not actual, one. If Polly were wrong, and Echo loved him so
much that she would break the word she had pledged to Dick Lane, then
he would confess all, and they would do what could be done to make it
right with the discarded lover.

Echo, observing from the window who was Polly's companion, ran out to
Jack with a cry of joy. He looked meaningly at Polly. She said: "Oh,
give me your bridle; I know how many's a crowd." Jack leaped to the
ground and took Echo in his arms while Polly rode off with the horses
to the corral, singing significantly:

"Spoon, spoon, spoon,
While the dish ran away with the spoon."

Jack and Echo embraced clingingly and kissed lingeringly. "It takes a
crazy old song like that to express how foolish we lovers are," said
Jack. "Why, I feel that I could outfiddle the cat, outjump the cow,
outlaugh the dog, and start an elopement that would knock the
performance of the tableware as silly as--well, as I am talking now.
I'm living in a dream--a Midsummer Night's Dream, such as you were
reading to me."

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," quoted Echo suggestively.

Dusk was falling. From the bunk-house rose the tinkling notes of a
mandolin; after a few preliminary chords, the player, a Mexican, began
a love-song in Spanish. The distant chimes of Mission bells sounded
softly on the evening air.

Jack and Echo sat down upon the steps of the piazza. Jack continued
the strain of his thought, but in a more serious vein:

"Echo, I'm so happy that I am frightened."

"Frightened?" she asked wonderingly.

"Yes, scared--downright scared," he answered. "I reckon I'm like an
Indian. An Indian doesn't believe it's good medicine to let the gods
know he's big happy. For there's the Thunder Bird--"

"The Thunder Bird?"

"The evil spirit of the storm," continued Jack. "When the Thunder Bird
hears a fellow saying he's big happy, he sends him bad luck--"

Echo laid her hand softly on the mouth of her sweetheart. "We won't
spoil our happiness, then, by talking about it. We will just feel
it--just be it."

She laid her head upon Jack's kn