d. I have seen strong men just as foolish before an
electrical storm, and the bravest woman I ever knew lost her grip one
still morning just from solitude."

There was another silence, then suddenly she lifted her head. "I am
sorry," she said, "but it is all over. I shall try my best not to annoy
you any more."

"Annoy me? Why, you haven't. What makes you think that?" Tisdale turned,
and the mellowness stole into his voice. "I didn't expect you to creep in
and go to sleep tranquilly alongside that bunch of sage."

At this she smiled. "You have found a flower to fit even her."

"I never made a misfit--yet," he answered and waited, looking into her
face, reading her through.

"But you have doubts," she supplemented, "and I warned you I should
disappoint you. I warned you at the start."

Tisdale laughed again, softly. "The odds were all against that Alaska
violet," he said, "but she weathered it through." And seating himself on
the steps, he looked up again to the night-enshrouded Pass. The air was
cooler; a light wind, drawing down from the divide, brought a hint of
dampness; it was raining somewhere, far off. "My doubts are all right," he
added, "and I am going to stay here as long as you want me to."

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRAVEST WOMAN HE EVER KNEW

Presently, during one of the interludes when darkness enveloped the gulf,
she began to entertain Tisdale with an experience in the Sierras, a little
adventure on one of those journeys with her father, when she had driven
Pedro and Don Jose. But though she told the story with composure, even
with a certain vivacity and charm, as she might have narrated it to a
small and intimate audience in any safe drawing-room, her self-control was
a transparency through which he saw her anxiety manoeuvering, in spite of
his promise, to keep him there.

"Strange, is it not?" she went on, "how things will take the gloss of
humor, looking back. That cloudburst was anything but funny at the time;
it was miserably exasperating to stand there drenched, with the
comfortable quarters of the mining company in sight, cut off by an
impassable washout. And it was wretched driving all those miles to our
hotel in wet clothes, with not so much as a dry rug to cover us; yet
afterwards, whenever I tried to tell about it, I failed to gain a shred of
sympathy. People laughed, as you are doing now."

"And you laughed with them," answered Tisdale quickly, "because looking
back you caught the