Just as Nick was finishing a somewhat hurried and sketchy luncheon a telegram was handed to him. It was from Max Wisler, the San Francisco detective, and it said laconically, "Don't let A. M. visit C. G."

As Nick read, the blood rushed to his forehead, and he sprang to his feet, knocking over the chair in which he had been sitting.

Max Wisler had not been told by him that Mrs. May was to visit Mrs. Gaylor; but that must be what he meant. It had not occurred to Nick that it could be necessary to mention Angela's brief stay, in telling Wisler that he himself was "running up to Lucky Star." The detective must have found out in some ferreting way of his own. And he had telegraphed, "Don't let A. M. visit C. G." What could be his reason? Then suddenly a dreadful explanation flashed into Nick's head; flashed there and stayed, as if printed in letters of blood on his brain.

Wisler had been right after all. He had found out who sent the box of poison oak. Those hateful questions of his, so much resented, had been justified. There could be no other explanation. Nothing else could excuse this warning. It seemed too hideous to be true that Wisler had telegraphed because there was danger for Angela, and yet——

Nick did not wait to finish out the sentence in his mind. The Japanese servant, who was cook and valet and chamberman, had brought the telegram and the last luncheon dish at the same time. Now he was providing Billy the chauffeur with something to eat. But Nick did not wait or even think about Billy. The engagement with Mrs. Gaylor and Angela was for five o'clock, but that made no difference to Nick, with the telegram in his hand. Knowing what he knew—for he did know now, as if he had seen all Wisler's proofs—he would not trust Angela alone with Carmen for a single hour. He was going this instant to snatch her away, with no matter what excuse. He would think of something to satisfy Angela, for she must not find out the truth if he could help it—anyhow, not while she was under Carmen's roof; it would shock and distress her too much. The principal thing was to get her out of the place quickly and quietly. As for Carmen—he could not decide yet how he should deal with Carmen. Loyal as he was by nature, and as he had shown himself to Wisler, modest as to his own deserts, and slow to fancy himself valued by any woman, he could not now help seeing, as Wisler had seen the one motive which could have tempted Carmen Gaylor to send Angela May a box of poison-oak. Many little things came back, in a flood of disturbing memory; things to which Nick had attached no importance at the time, or had misunderstood, owing to his humility, where women were concerned, and his chivalrous, almost exaggerated respect for his employer's wife and widow—the generous, disinterested friend that he had thought her. "What a fool—what a double-dyed fool!" he anathematized himself, as he got the motor ready to start, while Billy still ate apple-pie and cream on the kitchen veranda. In spite of Wisler's catechism he had let Angela accept Carmen's invitation, had even urged her to accept. If anything hideous happened it would be his fault. But no, surely nothing would happen. It was too bad to be true. If Carmen had committed the crime of sending the poison-oak, it must have been in a fit of madness, after hearing things—stupid things—from Miss Dene. By this time she must have repented. She could not be a woman and harm a guest—such a guest as Angela May and in her own house.

And yet it was odd—he had dimly thought it odd, even in his ignorance—that Carmen should have followed them out to the Big Trees from Wawona, there to make a "dead set" at Mrs. May. She had said that her choice of the Yosemite for rest and change of air was a coincidence; that she had not known he was in the neighbourhood until she heard the news at Wawona. But suddenly Nick ceased to believe that story. She had gone because he was there—with Angela May.

As he thought these things he was starting the car, getting into the car, driving the car away from the house, to the Gaylor ranch. There was no bad patch of road. That was an invention of Carmen's for the plausibility of the plan she had sketched out to Angela. The road had been finished months ago, and Nick flew along it in the Bright Angel at a pace which might have got him into trouble with the police if there had been any police to spy upon him. The way ran through disused pasture land which was to be irrigated, enriched, and grown with alfalfa; and at a turn in the road he came upon a sight which flashed to his eyes like a spurt of vitriol. He saw the wild cattle break through the fence—the new "bunch" which Carmen had just got from Arizona. He saw them struggling, and trampling each other down, and sweeping through the gap like a wave through a broken dyke. He saw a figure in white running toward him, and knew it was Angela May—knew that she must die unless he could be in time to save her.

Nick turned the car, and sent it leaping off the road, to bound over the rough hummocks, billowing under the heat-baked grass. He looked like a dead man, with only his eyes and hands—his strong, firm hands—alive. The motor rocked on the green waves as if in a stormy sea, and groaned like a wounded bull—one of those who had died there at the broken fence, with their hearts' blood in their mouths.

It was almost on her now—the wild black wave—with death in its wake and death in its gift; but he reached her first, and leaning out while the car swerved—as many a time he had leaned from his galloping bronco in cowboy days, to pick up a hat or a handkerchief—he caught Angela up beside him. Then with a twist of the steering-wheel he gave the Bright Angel a half-turn that sent her flying along in front of the cattle, almost underneath the tossing horns and plunging hoofs. Thus he shot past the surging line of them, since he could not turn round sharply to run before the wave without risk of upsetting. As the automobile dashed past, the cattle surged on irresistibly; but Nick and Angela in the car were beyond the reach of hoofs and horns.

Three mounted cowboys saw the race won, and yelled a wild yell of triumph, but their duty was to the cattle. They went about their business knowing that the car was safe; and Nick neither saw the men nor consciously heard their shouts.

Angela was half fainting. Holding her up, he steered as he could, slowing down now lest the jumping springs of the car should break. He drove away from, not toward, Mrs. Gaylor's house. He would not take Angela back to Carmen even for a moment. Yet as she was alone and swooning she could not go to his house. He caught at the idea of a quick run into Bakersfield in search of a doctor. But when he saw at last that Angela was slowly coming to herself, drawing deep, sobbing breaths, her eyelashes trembling on wet cheeks, he eased the car down on a quiet stretch of road, under the shade of young walnut-trees and oaks. There he stopped for a while, in the cool tree shadows.

"You're safe, precious one, safe," he whispered, as he might have soothed a child. "There's nothing to be afraid of now."

Angela opened her eyes and looked at him through her lashes as she had never looked before. "I—thought of you then," she murmured. "I thought of you—I wanted you. Just when I expected to die."

Her eyes, her voice, her words, broke down the last barrier that held him back; and he would have been more or less than man if he had not poured out, in a torrent, all his love and worship in a flood of words.

"Darling—heart's dearest—do you think I'd have let you die so? I must have felt—I must have heard you call me. It had to be. I'd feel a thought of yours across the world," he stammered. "If I were in my grave and you wanted me, my spirit would come back into my body to serve you. How I love you, love you, dear! It can't be that such love can leave you cold. I'm not of your world, but come down to mine, or help me to come into yours. Give me a little love, just a little love, and I'll give you my soul."

"Don't—oh, don't!" faltered Angela. She raised her head from his arm and sat up, leaning away from him.

"I know I'm a wretch!" he said. "I ought to be shot for speaking of myself, when you're all broken to pieces. The words came. I've been keeping them back day by day, but that's no excuse. Forgive me!"

"No—you mustn't use the word forgive—when you've just saved my life! It's only this—I can't let you go on."

"Not now. I know. But some time——"

"No. Not ever. Don't think I couldn't care for you. It isn't that. I could. I——But I mustn't care. It's all impossible! I ought to have told you long ago. The only thing is to forget—for us both. Oh, if I could have kept you for my friend! But I feel now that's impossible, too. After this, we can't be friends, can we?"

"No, we can't be friends," he echoed, very pale, suddenly weary and almost broken by the strain he had endured. "But are you sure——"

"Sure. The more I care, the more sure. Oh, Nick, my dear, my dear, I wish you had let me die!"

He looked at her strangely and very sadly, after his first start and stiffening of the muscles. "Would that have been better than caring for me?" he asked in a voice so low that she could just catch the words.

"Yes, it would have been much better," she answered, covering her face with her hands to hide the tears that burned her eyes. She was too weak for the explanation she would have given at sunset among the redwoods. This was no time, and she was in no state for explanations. She could only feel and hide from him what she felt, or part of it; for if he but half guessed how she loved him and wanted his love, she would be in his arms, his lips on hers. There was no thought in her mind how terribly he might be misunderstanding.

His lips were white. "Very well," he said. "It's better for me that you've been frank. All the same and all the more I want you to forgive me for speaking at a time like this. I won't offend you again. Only I don't take back anything. So now you know. Don't try to talk, and I won't talk much to you. I don't think I could if I would. I'm going to drive you to Bakersfield. But shall I take you to a kind old doctor I know, who can give you something to pick you up, or would you rather I'd drop you at a hotel? For—I can't explain, so please don't ask—but I mustn't let you go to Mrs. Gaylor's again. There's a good reason why. Maybe you'll know some time, but I don't believe it can ever be from me. I'll fetch your maid and your baggage when you're settled somewhere. And if you're strong enough, the best thing will be to start for San Francisco to-night. When you're there, see Mr. Morehouse, and let him take good care of you. For it's true, as you said; you and I can't go on being friends."

Angela opened her lips to answer him, but could not. He started the car once more, and drove on faster.

"I'll go to a hotel, thank you, not to a doctor," she said when she could speak.

Soon the news of the stampede among the new bunch of steers from Arizona found its way to the house, and Carmen was told what had happened. The rush of the cattle had been stopped by the time she heard of it, but only at the brink of the big irrigation canal. Two fences had been broken down and a good many animals killed. Others had had to be shot.

"Anybody hurt?" Carmen asked in a queer, dry voice. She seemed to take little interest in the fate of the new cattle, though they had been a costly purchase.

So far as was known, nobody had been hurt. But it was too soon to be sure yet. And there was no one who could tell up to that moment how the stampede had been started. But some of the boys talked about a gun going off mysteriously. And a lady had been seen in the disused pasture. The boys had seen her running, and afterward being caught up by a man in a big yellow motor, what man they weren't sure—they'd been going too fast and were too far off—but he was like Nick Hilliard.

And it was then that Simeon Harp came on to the terrace where Carmen was standing to hear the story. Seeing his face she knew that things had gone utterly wrong, and that all hope was lost.

"Nick will know what I did!" she told herself, as the death-stab of failure struck her in the heart. "Maybe he knows already. If that woman has told him how I sent her out alone, and how I lied about his plans being changed, and the men he had to meet, then he must guess. They're sure to compare notes, and he'll suspect about the poison-oak."

The ice of despair was a frozen dagger in her breast. Even before the chance came for a talk with Simeon Harp she made up her mind what to do. It would be a cruel wrench, but there was nothing else. She could not face Nick's look of loathing, even though gratitude for the past should close his lips upon his knowledge, and upon his secret thoughts of her. To go away, far away, this very hour, before he could come, would be a confession of guilt and of utter defeat; but to Carmen, crushed and hopeless and ashamed, it was the only thing to do. She would go and never come back. She would live in the East, or, better still, in Europe, and sell the hateful ranch. She had received many tempting offers since her husband's death, and through her lawyers she would accept one that was still open. Life here would be too hateful with Nick for a silent enemy; Nick married by and by, perhaps, to the other woman.

The excitement of her decision kept Carmen from a physical collapse. Quickly, if a little confusedly, she thought out a plan. There would, of course, be a question of insurance for the dead and injured cattle, she said to the elderly foreman who had taken Nick's place on the ranch. She would go to San Francisco at once. No use to point out that it was unnecessary. She wished to go. That was enough. And she gave directions to every one what was to be done in her absence, for she might be away some days. She would not take her maid. She preferred to travel alone. And when some question was asked later by one of the house servants about the guest, Mrs. May, Carmen answered: "She has been suddenly called away from here by telegram. I don't think she'll be coming back to the house. There'll be a message for that Irish girl of hers by and by, I expect. Anyhow, I can't trouble about them now. Their affairs must take care of themselves."

Mariette, Carmen's French maid, hurriedly and sulkily packed enough things to last her mistress for a week; and by the time the trunk and bag were ready the carriage was waiting to take Mrs. Gaylor into Bakersfield. Everybody knew that no train would leave Kern for San Francisco until night, but the imperious lady was in no mood to receive extraneous information. She had said something about seeing a lawyer in Bakersfield. If she chose to waste hours there it was her business, not that of the household.

But driving to the town, Carmen decided not to go to San Francisco by that night's train. She had had time to reflect a little, not only upon what had happened, but upon what was likely to happen. If Angela May suspected the truth—and Carmen's conscience told her that this was more than probable—she would not go back to the ranch. Nick would not let her go there, even if she wished it. He would send for or fetch the Irish maid and the luggage, while Mrs. May—already engaged to marry him, perhaps—waited at his place, or at a Bakersfield hotel. In any case it was almost certain that "the woman" (as Carmen called Angela always, in her mind) would travel to San Francisco that night. And it seemed likely to Mrs. Gaylor that Nick would go with her and the maid. Carmen could not risk an encounter in the train.

Arrived at Bakersfield, fortunately without meeting Nick in his motor, she hired a large automobile. And at the hour when Hilliard was being informed that Mrs. Gaylor had gone away for a few days, on business which had come up suddenly, she was travelling swiftly by road to San Francisco.

The car she had engaged was a powerful touring automobile, with side-curtains of canvas, and these she ordered to be kept down; for she had some wild fear that Nick might discover her plan, try to follow and find her during her journey, necessarily much longer by motor than by train. Always by daylight she was peeping out, nervously, from under her thick veil, but the Bright Angel never flashed into sight. She knew at last that it would not come, that Nick did not mean to follow; that she would not see him again this side the grave; for she did not intend ever to return to the Gaylor ranch. Where she would live she did not know yet, though she thought vaguely of some great city in Europe—Paris, perhaps, where there would be plenty of excitement which might help her to forget. Meanwhile, the thing was to get away—away, not only from California, but even from America—as quickly as possible, it hardly mattered how, for luckily—the one piece of luck she had left!—there was plenty of money. And the ranch could take care of itself.

The day Carmen reached San Francisco a ship happened to be sailing for Japan. She was able to engage a cabin, and went on board almost at the last moment. Among others who arrived very late was a bent old man, with a worn face which had once been handsome. Carmen did not see him till the third day out. Then, from the deck sacred to second-class passengers, a pair of dark blue, red-rimmed eyes looked up at her as she leaned listlessly on the rail, gazing down.

Madame Vestris had seen in the crystal a man standing beside her, a man in shadow. After all, it was not Nick Hilliard but Simeon Harp.

One evening, when July was beginning, Nick Hilliard sat on the veranda of his plain little house, which he had grown to love. Swinging back and forth in a big rocking-chair, he smoked a pipe and thought very hard. As he thought and smoked, he looked dreamily at a young owl in a big cage; the owl he had sent home from Paso Robles.

If he had been thinking about it, he could have seen, dark against the pale fire of the desert sky, the source of his fortune; the great gusher throwing up its black spout of oil, like tons upon tons of coal. For the famous Lucky Star oil supply showed no sign yet of giving out, though it had been playing like a huge geyser for many months; and already, since its mysterious birth, many younger brothers had been born, small and insignificant comparatively, but money-makers. If Nick's thought had not drawn down a curtain in front of his eyes, he must have seen, across a blue lake and a black desert created by a rain of oil, a forest of derricks, like a scattered group of burnt fir-trees with low-hung bare branches. But instead of these his mind's eye saw a new road, shaded by walnuts and oaks, that marched in long straight lines between rough pasture and irrigated land. He saw in the tree-shadows a yellow motor-car drawn up by the side of the road, and in it a beautiful, pale girl, hatless, with disordered golden hair and a torn white dress. He saw a man with the girl, and heard her say that it would have been better to die than let herself care for him.

"Yet she did care for me," Nick told himself obstinately. "There's no getting over that. She said, 'You mustn't think I don't care.'" And even if she hadn't said it, there was that look in her eyes. Could he ever forget the look, or cease to thrill at the memory? No; he knew that he could not, till the hour of his death. "It was because I'm not of her world, that she couldn't bear to let herself go, and love me as she was beginning to love me, I know," he thought, as he had thought countless times before, in the weeks since he had quietly let her go out of his life. "I'm not what she's been brought up to call a gentleman," his mind went on drearily preaching to him. "I suppose I can't realize the bigness and deepness of the gulf between us, as she sees it. I've only my own standards to judge by. Hers are mighty different. I knew there was a gulf, but I hoped love would bridge it. She thought no bridge could be strong enough for her to walk on to me. I wonder if she thinks the same yet, or if the feeling I have sometimes, that she's calling to me from far off, means anything? I told her that day I'd feel her thinking of me across the world. Well—what if she's thinking of me now?"

Nick had often debated this subject, and looked at it from every point of view; for after the first blow over the heart, a dim, scarcely perceptible light of hope had come creeping back to him. Knowing from her words, and better still from her eyes, that Angela had cared a little, at least enough to suffer, Nick had wondered whether he might not make himself more acceptable to her than he had been.

He did not disparage himself with undue humility in asking this question. He knew that he was a man, and that honour and strength and cleanness of living counted for something in this world. But if he could become more like the men she knew—in other words, a gentleman fit to mate with a great lady—what then?

For Nick was aware that his manners were not polished. In what Mrs. May would call "society," no doubt he would be guilty of a thousand mistakes, a thousand awkwardnesses. If he did anything rightly it would be by instinct—instinct implanted by generations of his father's well-born, well-bred ancestors—rather than from knowledge of what was conventionally the "proper thing." If Angela had let love win, perhaps she might often have been humiliated by his ignorances and stupidities, Nick reminded himself; and for him that would have been worse than death, even as for her, according to her admission, it would have been worse than death to go on caring for him. Perhaps she had been wise. Maybe he was "impossible." But, if ever she suffered a moment's regret, now that they were parted, and if he could yet find a way of happiness for both, better than cold wisdom, was there no hope? It was of a way to reach her that he was thinking to-night; and abruptly the big chair ceased to swing and creak. "I'll go and see that chap they call the Dook!" Nick mumbled on a sudden resolution, and knocked out the ashes from his pipe.

A minute later he was strolling through the hot purple twilight toward Lucky Star City, one of the queerest little towns on earth. It had not, however, the remotest conception that it was queer. On the contrary, it thought itself a gay and pleasant place, singularly up-to-date, and lacking nothing except water, which was now worth a good deal more than the fortune-giving oil of which it had too much.

The rough, mostly unpainted, wooden houses, shops, and hotels composing Lucky Star City were so near the great oil gusher which accounted for the town's existence that the front rank of frame buildings was peppered all over with a jetty spray. This disfigurement had come when the gusher was at its highest, and its black, blowing spume had been borne by the wind for long distances. The earth seemed to have gone into mourning and to be spread with a pall almost as far as the boundary of the ranch which Nick had retained for himself; yet there was a strong dividing-line. He had kept some pasture land, for he loved cattle; but his great pleasure had been in irrigation; and literally he had made the desert "blossom as a rose." Even the smell was different when he turned his back upon his own fragrant alfalfa fields, and drew in breaths laden with the fumes of crude petroleum. But he was used to the scent of oil and hardly noticed it.

He skirted round the desert lake and steered clear of another lesser lake, formed entirely of petroleum from the great gusher. By day its greasy blackness glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick passed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear the thick splash of the gusher that rose and fell, like the beating of a giant's heart, and from the brightly lighted town sounds of laughter and fiddling came to him.

Lucky Star City had no suburbs. The whole place had grown up in less than a year, and, in fact, such buildings as had existed for six months were known as "old." There was but one street, though a few ambitious landowners had run up houses in "gardens" at a short but haughty distance from the "business part"; and at night the town was seen at its best. The three two-storeyed, verandaed hotels—one painted white, another green, the third and noisiest not painted at all—blazed with lights. The drug store, the jewellery store (for there was a jewellery store, and a prosperous one), the grocery store—combining a large trade in candy—the post office, and the dry-goods store—where two extremes were made to meet with a display of hats and shoes in the same window—were every one open and crowded. Men in shirt-sleeves, and men in khaki, men of almost all conditions and nations, sat or lounged on the hotel verandas making music or listening to it, swapping stories and yelling with laughter. Away in the distance at one end of the long street—which had no pavement but yellow sand—there was a shooting gallery, and every second or two was marked off with a shot, or a shout of applause or derision. At the other end, equally far away from the populous centre of shops, was a variety theatre, a mere shanty, run up in a day; and as Nick took his way toward the green-painted hotel he could hear the shrill squalling of a woman's untrained voice, shrieking out the latest comic song.

"Hello, Nick!" "How go things, High-pockets?" friendly voices saluted Hilliard as he marched through the cigarette-strewn sand. And he had a laughing word for each one. Everybody who was anybody had a nickname at Lucky Star City, and Hilliard was rather pleased with "High-pockets"—bestowed upon him because of his height and his long straight legs. "The Dook" was the sobriquet of the person he had come to see; and it was by this name that Nick inquired for him, gravely, of the landlord.

The man addressed chuckled. "I guess he's gone over to Meek's to try and borrow some cash off his dear country-man. I seen him strollin' down that way. Hope Meek'll fork out. The Dook owes me two weeks' board, and I've give him notice to pay up or quit. London hotels may hand out free meals to the nobility and gentry for the sake o' the ad. But this ain't London. Nope!"

"Is he nobility?" inquired Nick.

"Blamed if I know. Puts on airs enough. Ain't got much else to put on now, I guess. No one never told me you and he was chums."

"No more we are. I never had a word with him; but I'm lookin' for a few," said Nick. "If he can make good, we may do some business together."

"Huh!" grunted the landlord of the emerald-painted hotel, which had received its colour in honour and subtle advertisement of the owner's name—Green. "I don't see you two swappin' canteens any, Nick, but it ain't for me to bust into your game; and I guess if you sling him a roll o' your good greenbacks, I'll contrive to switch some o' 'em off the line into my pocket. That's to say, if you give him a job he can stick to his bunk and his grub in my hotel."

Mr. Green was just about to round off his ultimatum with a spurt of tobacco-juice aimed at a passing cat, when he checked himself hastily at sight of a woman. What became of the tobacco-juice was a mystery or a conjuring trick, but the cat's somewhat blunted sensibilities, and the lady's—not yet blunted—were spared.

"Who's that?" Nick inquired in a low, respectful voice, when Green had touched the place where his hat would have been if he had had it on, and the young woman, bowing with stiff politeness, had gone by.

"What, don't you know?" the landlord of the Eureka Hotel replied with a question. "But I forgot, you ain't shown up around here much since you blow'd hack from the East. The fellers say Noo York's kinder got your goat, and you're sheddin' your feathers in these lonesome wilds, pinin' after the theayters and swell doin's in the Waldorf-Astoria. But I tell 'em 'nope, that ain't Nick Hilliard. He's true-blue to the Golden West."

"Right you are," said Nick. "All the same, I don't know who the lady is, and I'm sure I never saw her here, though I have a sort of feelin' I remember her face."

"Met in another world, mebbe?" Green chuckled. "She ain't no great looker, though, more's the pity for our young sparks that could do with a noo beauty at Lucky Star. She's no chicken, either; and her face is the kind of face that to see once is to forget twice, accordin' to your friend the Dook, who's great on what he calls epergrams, when he's feelin' well."

"Oh, is he?" Nick's hopeful expression lost some of its glow, for this trait of the Dook's did not strike him as attractive. "He ain't my friend yet. But you haven't told me who the lady is. Maybe her name will shake up my recollection box, for I've seen her somewhere, sure."

"She's Miss Sara Wilkins, the new school-teacher," Green replied, glad to impart information. "She was imported from the fur East while you was away; called on in a hurry to take the place of Mrs. Pears, who died on us, right in the midst of the last term, poor critter. She had no way with youngsters, Mrs. Pears hadn't, though she came recommended as a treasure: so p'raps it's just as well for us our treasure's laid up in heaven. We've got a surprisin' lot of children in this city, for such a young one; but our men are doin' that well they feel justified in sendin' fur their families. We're gettin' a mighty nice society: some o' our ladies from the East, as far off as Omaha; and 'twas the minister's wife stood out for this Miss Wilkins, an old school-fellow o' hern. Pity she ain't handsome, as we can't boast but two other unmarried gals in our set."

Nick reflected. Where had he seen that small-featured, conscientious little face? He seemed to associate it with some agreeable and not very distant episode; yet its intelligent insignificance was so overshadowed by the pleasantness of the episode itself, that he now tried in vain to identify it with a searchlight of recognition. "I give up," he said to himself discontentedly. "Maybe it'll come to me later." And then, suddenly, it did.

The new school-teacher at Lucky Star City was the little woman who had arrived with the Native Daughters at the Santa Barbara hotel, and would have been swamped by them had not Angela taken pity on her. No wonder it had been an effort to label his impression, for no woman had a face worth the name of face for Nick when Angela's was to be seen. But perhaps Miss Wilkins had not had the same difficulty in disentangling him from among her impressions of the past, for she had flashed upon him a glance, bright with interest, before casting down her eyes decorously and passing on.

"Here comes the Dook now," remarked the landlord of the Eureka. "By the look of him I guess his country-man wouldn't part with anything 'cept a drink. If he keeps clear of the liquor belt, as a general thing, it's only because his fee-nan-shel situation don't run to it. I'll introduce you."

A man approached, wearing a shambling air of discouragement, until he saw that he was under observation; whereupon his muscles tightened, and he pulled himself together, straightening his narrow shoulders and throwing back his small head.

"Mr. Nickson Hilliard, this is Mr. Montagu Jerrold, alias the Dook, a blarsted Britisher," announced Green affably. "Dook, this is Mr. Nickson Hilliard, who wants to meet you, the Lord knows why; late owner of Lucky Star gusher and the whitest man and the biggest man we've got in this section. His other name is High-pockets, as I guess you hev heard, and it might be Full-pockets too, wuthout steerin' wide o' the mark."

Nick put out his hand to the newcomer who had a haughty beak of a nose, little forehead, and less chin. Wretched bit of flotsam and jetsam on the sands of life, one keen look into his self-satisfied light eyes was enough to learn the secret of his failure; failure which, go where he would, seek as he might, could never be turned into success. Nick's heart pitied the man, while it shut involuntarily against him.

Montagu Jerrold crooked his elbow and lifted the brown strong hand of High-pockets to a level with his own weak chin, before he deigned to shake it. He did so then with an air, and a drawled "How d'y' do?" which was the most English thing that Nick had ever met with off the stage.

"Little brute, I'd like to kick him if he wasn't such a duffer," was Nick's reluctant thought, for he had wanted to be favourably impressed by the Dook. If this were really anything like an English duke, give him a crossing-sweeper! But he must not be too hasty in his generalization. He was unhappily sure that Mrs. May's position in her far-off world (world for which he was deemed unworthy) associated her with dukes, earls, barons, counts, and all sorts of titled anachronisms of every nation. Repulsive as this draggled specimen appeared, it might know something worth his, Nick Hilliard's, while to learn; and he was not going to give up because of first impressions. He had not met Montagu Jerrold before, but had heard of him often during the last three or four months since the Englishman "blew into" Lucky Star City. He was a boaster as well as a waster, no doubt; for according to himself, he knew "everybody at home," from the King down the whole gamut of the British peerage. Also he "claimed" to be an Oxford man, and it was that which, in this emergency, had focused Nick's attention upon him.

The landlord, aware that Nick had a "proposition" to make, excused himself when he had brought off the introduction; and the two men were left more or less alone at their end of the hotel veranda. Nevertheless, so complicated was the nature of Nick's business that he wished for greater privacy, and he suggested a stroll in the direction of the gusher.

"You're an Oxford graduate, aren't you?" he began.

"Ya-as, I went up to Oxford from Eton," drawled Jerrold with an accent which Nick disliked, but was ready to believe in as well-bred, because few Englishmen to the "manner born" had happened to come his way. "All the elder sons of my family, since the days of Charles the Second, don't you know, have gone in for the Army; and that's what I should have liked, but my eldest brother has the money as well as the title, d'you see, and I'm only third son. I——"

"Yes," said Nick curtly. "But you mustn't worry to tell me all your private affairs unless you really want to. Because what I'm most interested in is the Oxford part. I never went to college, nor to any school for the matter of that, except a night one, but I've tried to make up a bit with reading all I could. I suppose I don't know much about books, compared with you——"

"Oh, I was never much of a grind," the other cut in hastily. "I went in for other things. I was cox——".

"It's etiquette I'm thinking of," Nick confessed humbly. "You'd be born knowin' a lot about that, I dare say, in your family. And then, being at Oxford, too! I always notice college men have a different way from those who haven't been to any university. It's hard to explain the difference, but it's there."

"Oh, rather," agreed the Englishman. "You know our King himself will send all his sons to Oxford and Cambridge. Nothin' like it, my dear fellow, what? Our family——"

"Could you give lessons, sort of object-lessons, in what to do and what not do in society?" inquired Nick, eager yet shy, not ashamed of his motive in asking, but fearful by instinct that he was not getting hold of the right man.

"Nothing easier," returned Montagu Jerrold, the prominent gooseberries, which were his eyes, looking somewhat less thoroughly boiled. "I was thinkin' of leavin' this beastly hole, don't you know. Nothin' in it for a gentleman, what? But if you've somethin' to offer worth takin', why I might stick it out for a bit, I dessay."

Nick longed to box the' creature's ears; but they were well-shaped and might be the ears of a man born with etiquette flowing with his blue blood, through azure veins. The shape of his nose wasn't bad, but those eyes and that chin! They were, as Nick grimly expressed it to himself, the limit. Nevertheless, he would persevere, and try a course of lessons from the Dook.

They began to discuss terms, and Nick did not bargain. Mr. Jerrold was to have an advance payment of twenty-five dollars, on account of fifty, for ten "lessons"; and he was to come to Nick's house every evening to "supper" at half-past seven, remaining until half-past nine. Hilliard was to be watched through the meal and corrected if he did anything wrong with his knife and fork, or his bread; and they were to have conversations and discussions covering various imagined emergencies.

Details were arranged, much to the satisfaction of Montagu Jerrold, whose real name was Herbert Higgins, and who had been a house decorator, employed—and discharged—by a small London firm. Never had he been inside an Oxford college: never had he seen the King—except on a post card. He returned joyously to his hotel, where, as Mr. Green was lying in wait, he had to part with most of his advance. And Nick tramped home torn in mind, fearing instinctively that he was about to jump from the frying-pan of ignorance into a fire of vulgarity at which Angela would shudder.

Every night for a week the Dook appeared promptly in time for Nick's substantial supper, which, by the way, he advised his host to transform into dinner. "You simply can't have 'supper' at half-past seven, my deah fellow. It isn't done! Dinner should be at eight, at earliest. Our royalties prefer it at nine. If you have supper it is after the theatre or opera, don't you know." But when Nick stolidly refused to be such an "affected donkey" as to call his evening meal by another name to make it sweeter, Mr. Jerrold did not scorn the meal because it lacked refinement.

On the seventh night, however, Hilliard gave his noble instructor notice.

"I'm real sorry," he remarked pleasantly, "but I can't help it. I'd rather go on as I am, and pin myself to a prickly pear, than shine in society by doing any of these monkey tricks you've been tryin' to put me on to. You say they're 'the thing' and the newest dope and all that, and maybe they're real nice for your sort, but I tell you they're not for mine! It seems to me you know a wonderful lot of fool things that ain't so, and I can't yoke up with 'em. What's more, I don't mean to. And now I see they're the only cards you've got in your hand I don't want any more dealt out to me—Hook up my little finger when I come to grips with a coffee-cup! No, thank you! I see myself doin' it or any other of the pussy-catisms you've been tryin' to unload on me. And you drop your 'g's' just as bad as I do. No, you'll have to switch off, doc; and after to-night you can go your way and I'll go mine, for there's nothin' doin' here for you except this little roll of bills. Good night, bud. That's all the trumps in the game!"

But the bills—which were the trumps for Jerrold—amounted to fifty dollars more than he had been promised for the whole course of lessons. So he had not done badly after all. And leaving Lucky Star City, which had no oil nor milk of human kindness for him, he drifted on somewhere else, as he will continue to drift until he stumbles into an ignominious grave.

But Nick was angry and thwarted—angry with himself because he had been a fool, and thwarted because he remained as before, handicapped by his own ignorance. In spite of Jerrold's boasts, Nick's instinct had told him after the first words exchanged that the man was not only a cad, but a rank pretender. Still, in his desire for social knowledge, he had refused at first to listen to the voice of instinct and had been punished for obtuseness. The very thought of the little drawling outsider who had delighted in his sobriquet of "the Dook" made Hilliard feel sick, and he opened wide all the windows and doors when the contemptible creature went out of the house. "Wanted to turn me into a dry-goods clerk, did he?" Nick grumbled. And the episode was closed.

One afternoon, not many days after the expulsion of Montagu Jerrold, Nick kept a long-made promise, by going to call on the wife of the Presbyterian minister, the only professional purveyor of religion who had yet settled in Lucky Star City. Mrs. Kenealy was out, but was coming back soon, and Nick was urged by her small daughter to wait. This he consented to do, and found the school-teacher also waiting in the pleasant little "living-room."

The young man and woman were introduced by the child, who, then relieved of responsibility, left them to each other's mercy, and flew to a friend with whom she had been playing dolls on the back porch.

"I don't suppose you remember me," said Miss Sara Wilkins rather wistfully. "But I remember you very well."

"So do I you," Nick was glad to reply with truth; and his heart warmed to the wisp of a woman to whom Miss Dene had been catty and Mrs. May kind. "It was at Santa Barbara."

"Why, you do remember!" she exclaimed delightedly. "I never thought you would. I always think there's nothing about me that any one could recollect. Oh, would you mind telling me how that lovely lady is who was so good to me? I often think about her. She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life."

Nick could have kissed her hands—little thin hands—kissed them even in their gray lisle-thread gloves; Needless to say, however, he did nothing of the sort. He answered quietly that it was now some time since he had seen Mrs. May, but he supposed she was well, and still in California, probably in San Francisco. She was planning to build a house near Monterey. Though his voice and manner were particularly calm, his eyes were as wistful, perhaps, as the school-teacher's smile had been. And just because Sara Wilkins knew well what it was to be wistful and try to hide it, perhaps she saw more clearly than a more attractive woman would. "Something had happened," she said to herself. That splendid young couple, about whom she had built up such a gorgeous romance, had been parted, and this handsome fellow with the kind smile and heroic shoulders was unhappy, far unhappier than Sara Wilkins had ever been, strange as that might seem—he who had looked so fortunate! Sara wondered if the lovely lady were unhappy, too, or if she had been cruel; and because Miss Wilkins adored romance (having nothing more personally her own to adore), not because she was naturally curious, the little woman positively ached to know the story.

They had nearly half an hour together she and Nick before Mrs. Kenealy returned, and in that time they had come close to the beginning of a friendship, each being secretly in need of sympathy, and dimly detecting the need in the other. Their liking for one another enchanted Mrs. Kenealy, who was a born matchmaker. To be sure, Miss Sara Wilkins was not pretty, and would never see twenty-nine again, but she was a good girl, clever and affectionate, and would make Nick Hilliard the best of wives if only he could be brought to see it. She sat between them, chattily telling each one nice things about the other, and soon she suggested bringing Miss Wilkins to visit Nick's ranch. School was off now, and the poor dear had nothing to do but read and write letters home, whither it cost far too much to return for only a few weeks. Nick said that he would be delighted; and offered to send Miss Wilkins as many books as she liked to her boarding house. Books were great friends of his, he admitted somewhat shyly. She was welcome to borrow any she cared to have.

They saw a good deal of each other during the next fortnight, too much for the school-teacher's peace of mind; for the oftener they met the more was she convinced that Nick was in love, perhaps hopelessly in love, with another woman as different from herself as a lily from a dusty sprig of lavender. Then, one day when Nick had started to carry her some books and they had met on the way, the two sat down and talked by the side of the blue, brackish lake, sheltering from the sun behind a bank of yellow sand that was like the high back of a queerly shaped throne. At a distance passed Green, the landlord of the Eureka, out walking with his little daughter, and in speaking of him and the odd folk who stopped at the green hotel the "Dook" was mentioned. He had disappeared from Lucky Star City some time before, but Miss Wilkins had met and disliked him.

"Horrid little pretentious toad!" she exclaimed sharply. "He was always talking to every one he could get hold of about his family and his swell friends and Oxford. But I don't believe any of his stories. He was just worse than nobody at all; and East I've met real nice Englishmen who had a lovely accent, and wouldn't be found dead drawling like he did."

Nick laughed. "You're jolly right," he said; and then being in a humorous as well as confidential mood, he told the story of himself and Montagu Jerrold.

"Wasn't I a Johnny?" he asked at the end. "Served me right for trying to make a silk purse of myself. Can't be done, I guess."

"But you are a silk purse!" Sara protested indignantly. "How can you talk about yourself the way you do?"

"I'm a little down on my luck these days," he answered. "Did you ever read about the moth who loved a star? I guess, when that moth got to thinking of himself and his chances, he saw himself pretty well as he really was, poor old chap. Fusty brown wings, too many legs, antennae the wrong shape, and a clumsy way of usin' 'em. I've gone and made a moth of myself, Miss Wilkins."

"Maybe the star doesn't think you a moth, or anyhow not a common moth," the little school-teacher tried to comfort him loyally, though her heart ached as a lonely woman's heart must ache when the man she could have loved, if she had dared, confides in her about the "other." She had known quite well that there was another, but to have the confession come out in words seemed to make her feel the grayness of life rather more intensely than she had felt it before. Yet she rallied her forces and longed to fight Nick Hilliard's battles and wave his banner in the face of the enemy—if enemy there were.

"That's just what the star does think!" laughed Nick. "She thinks I'm common."

Miss Wilkins stiffened with indignation. "I don't believe it—if she's a real star. And you wouldn't mistake an imitation one for real, would you?"

"She's the brightest star in the heavens; as good as a whole constellation."

"Then she can't think you common."

"Well, put in another way. She thinks me 'impossible'—impossible for her, that is. She told me so. But I might have known it without telling. I guess she thought I would know. I had the cheek to hope, though, that I might polish myself up enough to pass muster in a crowd, even a crowd of her sort of people, and that she might change her mind about me."

"As if that disgusting little Montagu Jerrold could teach you anything!"

"I found he couldn't. Not anything she'd like me better for knowing."

"If she doesn't find you good enough as you are she isn't worth loving," insisted the school-teacher. "Oh, I know I'm not the same kind of woman she is! I'm only a little 'provincial,' as I expect she'd call me in her own mind, but—but I can tell a man when I see him."

"Thank you a whole lot for sticking up for me," said Nick, boyishly. "But how do you know what kind of a woman my star is?"

Miss Wilkins blushed and was silent. She did not look pretty when she blushed, like Angela, but Nick thought she had one of the nicest little faces in the world.

"I expect I've gone and given myself away," he said. "Well, I don't care, for you're so good and sympathetic. You've seen my star, and you can judge just what kind of a blame fool I was to hope she could ever really care for a rough fellow like me—care enough to be yoked up with me for life."

"Are you sure she didn't care?" asked the school-teacher.

If he had "given himself away" he did not intend to give away Angela. "I told you she said I was impossible," he answered discreetly. "Well, thank you again for listenin' to my whinings. It's done me a lot of good. Now I've talked enough and too much about myself. Let's talk about you."

"There's nothing interesting to say about me," Miss Wilkins defended herself, with the faintest sigh that only a man who loved her would have heard. "We won't talk about you any more, though, if you don't want to. That book of Mr. Muir's you sent me is beautiful. I've been wishing to read it for years."

So they fell to discussing The National Parks of America; but Sara's heart was not in the discussion, much as she admired the book. She was thinking about Nick and Angela.

"It doesn't seem," she told herself, "that a woman who could be so kind to another woman as she was to me, when she didn't even know me, could be cruel to a man she did know and like, even if she didn't love him. And could a woman he loved not love him back again?"

Miss Wilkins had resigned herself long ago, or thought she had, to going through life without any intimate personal interests of her own, and when her heart ached hardest that night in her mean little boarding-house bedroom, it was going out most warmly toward Nick, and yearning for the happiness of making him happy.

"If I could only do something!" she said to her mossy-smelling pillow. "And I owe her a good turn too, although maybe she doesn't deserve it. I wonder what I could do?"