y have felt it too, for she presently said, "Kiss
me and let me go."

"But we must have a longer talk, darling--when--when--others are not
waiting."

"Do you know the far barn near the boundary?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I used to take your books there, afternoons to--to--be with you," she
whispered, "and Paw gave orders that no one was to come nigh it while I
was there. Come to-morrow, just before sundown."

A long embrace followed, in which all that they had not said seemed,
to them at least, to become articulate on their tremulous and clinging
lips. Then they separated, he unlocking the door softly to give her
egress that way. She caught up a book from a desk in passing, and
then slipped like a rosy shaft of the coming dawn across the fading
moonlight, and a moment after her slow voice, without a tremor of
excitement, was heard calling to her companions.

CHAPTER VII.

The conversation which Johnny Filgee had overheard between Uncle Ben and
the gorgeous stranger, although unintelligible to his infant mind, was
fraught with some significance to the adult settlers of Indian Spring.
The town itself, like most interior settlements, was originally a
mining encampment, and as such its founders and settlers derived their
possession of the soil under the mining laws that took precedence of all
other titles. But although that title was held to be good even after
the abandonment of their original occupation, and the establishment of
shops, offices, and dwellings on the site of the deserted places, the
suburbs of the town and outlying districts were more precariously held
by squatters, under the presumption of their being public land open to
preemption, or the settlement of school-land warrants upon them. Few of
the squatters had taken the trouble to perfect even these easy titles,
merely holding "possession" for agricultural or domiciliary purposes,
and subject only to the invasion of "jumpers," a class of adventurers
who, in the abeyance of recognized legal title, "jumped" or forcibly
seized such portions of a squatter's domains as were not protected by
fencing or superior force. It was therefore with some excitement that
Indian Spring received the news that a Mexican grant of three square
leagues, which covered the whole district, had been lately confirmed by
the Government, and that action would be taken to recover possession. It
was understood that it would not affect the adverse possessions held
by the town u