, with a bitter laugh.

"I didn't say that," said Rand, "and I don't think it. What I meant
was, he might have met a party that was picnicking here to-day,--Sol.
Saunders and wife, and Miss Euphemia--"

Mornie flung his arm away from her with a passionate gesture. "THEY
here!--picnicking HERE!--those people HERE!"

"Yes," said Rand, unconsciously a little ashamed. "They came here
accidentally."

Mornie's quick passion had subsided: she had sunk again wearily and
helplessly on a rock beside him. "I suppose," she said, with a weak
laugh--"I suppose, they talked of ME. I suppose they told you how, with
their lies and fair promises, they tricked me out, and set me before an
audience of brutes and laughing hyenas to make merry over. Did they tell
you of the insults that I received?--how the sins of my parents were
flung at me instead of bouquets? Did they tell you they could have
spared me this, but they wanted the few extra dollars taken in at the
door? No!"

"They said nothing of the kind," replied Rand surlily.

"Then you must have stopped them. You were horrified enough to know that
I had dared to take the only honest way left me to make a living. I know
you, Randolph Pinkney! You'd rather see Joaquin Muriatta, the Mexican
bandit, standing before you to-night with a revolver, than the helpless,
shamed, miserable Mornie Nixon. And you can't help yourself, unless you
throw me over the cliff. Perhaps you'd better," she said, with a bitter
laugh that faded from her lips as she leaned, pale and breathless,
against the bowlder.

"Ruth will tell you--" began Rand.

"D--n Ruth!"

Rand turned away.

"Stop!" she said suddenly, staggering to her feet. "I'm sick--for all
I know, dying. God grant that it may be so! But, if you are a man, you
will help me to your cabin--to some place where I can lie down NOW, and
be at rest. I'm very, very tired."

She paused. She would have fallen again; but Rand, seeing more in her
face than her voice interpreted to his sullen ears, took her sullenly
in his arms, and carried her to the cabin. Her eyes glanced around the
bright party-colored walls, and a faint smile came to her lips as she
put aside her bonnet, adorned with a companion pinion of the bright
wings that covered it.

"Which is Ruth's bed?" she asked.

Rand pointed to it.

"Lay me there!"

Rand would have hesitated, but, with another look at her face, complied.

She lay quite still a moment. Presently she said, "Give