ead in little escaping tendrils. The fearless level eyes of the
outdoors West were looking straight at her.

"I don't know. Does it?"

"We'll say this evidence had piled up against Captain Kilmeny instead of
against me. Would you have believed him guilty?"

"No. He couldn't have done it."

"On the same evidence you would acquit him and condemn me. Is that
fair?"

"I have known him for years--his standards, his ways of thinking. All
his life he has schooled himself to run a straight course."

"Whereas I----" He waited, the sardonic frosty smile on his lean strong
face.

Moya knew that the flutter of her pulses was telling tales in the pink
of her cheeks. "I don't know you."

"I'm only a workingman, and an American at that--so it follows that I
must be a criminal," he answered with a touch of bitterness.

"No--no! But you're--different. There's something untamed about you. I
don't quite know how to put it--as if you had been brought up without
restraints, as if you didn't care much for law."

"Why should I? Law is a weapon to bolster up the rich and keep down the
poor," he flung back with an acid smile. "But there's law and law. Even
in our class we have our standards, such as they are."

"Now it's you that isn't fair," she told him quietly. "You know I meant
nothing like that. The point is that I don't know what your standards
are. Law doesn't mean so much to people here. Your blood runs freer,
less evenly than ours. You don't let the conventions hamper you."

"The convention of honesty, for instance. Thanks, Miss Dwight."

"I didn't want to believe it, but----"

The penitence in her vivid face pleaded for her. He could not refuse the
outstretched hand of this slender lance-straight girl whose sweet
vitality was at once so delicate and so gallant. Reluctantly his palm
met hers.

"You're quite sure now that I didn't do it?"

"Quite sure."

"Even though I've been brought up badly?"

"Oh, I didn't say badly--really. You know I didn't."

"And though I'm wild and lawless?"

"Aren't you?" she flashed back with a smile that took from the words any
sting they might otherwise have had.

Mirth overflowed in his eyes, from which now many little creases
radiated. "You're a good one, neighbor. But, since you will have it, I
am. I reckon my standards even of honesty wouldn't square with yours. I
live in a rough mining camp where questions have two sides. It's up to
me to play the game the way the other fello