THE sun at meridian that day burned away the mists, for it was May and the high sun was able to prevail.

The sluiceway of Skulltree dam was open and in the caldron of the gorge a yeasty flood boiled and the sunlight painted rainbows in the drifting spume. Rolling cumbrously, end over end, at the foot of the sluice, lifting glistening, dripping flanks, sinking and darting through the white smother of the waters, the logs of the Flagg drive had begun their flight to the holdbooms of Adonia.

Lida and the taciturn squire whom she had drafted had climbed to the cliffs above the gorge in order to behold the first fruits of the compact which had been concluded with Craig and the Comas. Latisan went with her to the cliff because she had asked him to show her the way. His manner with her was not exactly shyness; she had been studying him, trying anxiously to penetrate his thoughts. He was reserved, but awkwardly so; it was more like embarrassment; it was a mingling of deference and despair in the face of a barrier.

It was warm up there where the sun beat against the granite, and she pulled off the jacket which had been one of her credentials in the north country. “I took the liberty of wearing it—and the cap. I’ll not need them any more.”

She took the cap from her head. The breeze which had followed the calm of the mist fluttered a loose lock of her hair across her forehead and the sun lighted a glint within the tress. He gazed and blinked.

“I heard you had them—I heard it in Mern’s office in New York,” he said, with poor tact.

She offered them and he took the garments, clutching the cap and holding the jacket across his arm.

“I don’t blame you for looking at me as you do,” she went on, demurely and deprecatingly feminine at that moment. She smoothed her blouse with both hands and glanced down at her stained and ragged skirt. “It’s my only warm dress and I’ve lived and slept in it—and I haven’t minded a bit when the coffee slopped. I was trying to do my best.”

He rocked his head voicelessly, helplessly—striving to fit speech to the thoughts that surged in him.

Then she made a request which perturbed him still more: “You came up here on horseback, I think you said. May I borrow the horse?”

“Do you mean that you’re going away?” he gulped.

She spread her hands and again glanced down at her attire. She was hiding deeper motives behind the thin screen of concern for her wardrobe, trying to make a jest of the situation, and not succeeding. “You must own up that I need to go shopping.”

He turned from her to the chasm where the logs were tumbling along.

“And there’s nothing to keep me here any longer, Mr. Latisan, now that you have come back!”He faced her again, swinging with a haste that ground his heels sharply on the ledge. But she put up her hand when he opened his mouth.

“Do you think it will do us any good to bring up what has happened? I don’t. I implore you not to mention it. You have come back to your work—it’s waiting for you. After what you have done to-day you’ll never need to lower your eyes before any man on this river. In my heart, when I gave you your cap and jacket, I was asking you to take back your work. I ask you with all the earnestness that’s in me! Won’t you do it?” There was a hint of a sob in her tones, but her eyes were full of the confidence of one who felt that she was not asking vainly.

He did not hesitate. But words were still beyond the reach of his tongue. He dragged off the billycock hat which he had bought in town and scaled it far out into the turbid flood. He pulled off the wrinkled coat of the ready-made suit and tossed it down the side of the cliff. With the cap on his head and buckling the belt of the jacket he stood before her. “The men gave me my chance to-day; you’re giving me a bigger one.”

“Then I’m only wasting your time—up here!”

It had not been in Latisan’s mind that he would make any reference to the past; she had implored him to keep silent and he was determined to obey. He was rigidly resolved to offer no plea for the future; this was the granddaughter—presumably the heiress of Echford Flagg, to be taken into her own after this service she had rendered. A Latisan of the broken Latisans had no right to lift his eyes to her!If there had been a twinkle of hope for his comfort in her attitude of reliance on him after he had arrived at Skulltree, there was none at that moment, for she had become distinctly dignified and distant. He swung back to that bitter conclusion which he had made a part of his convictions when he had pondered on the matter in his little room in New York—her frantically pledged affection had been only a part of her campaign of sacrifice. He was not blaming her for the pretense—he was not calling it deceit. She had fought for her own with such weapons as she could command in a time of stress.

He followed her meekly when she hurried down from the cliff.

On the path which led back to the Flagg camp a breathless cookee met them. “A team is here from Adonia, miss. It’s the big bays—Mr. Flagg’s horses.”

Instinctively she turned to Ward, making him her prop as she had done previously on that day.

“I’ve been expecting it,” he told her. “It’s just what your grandfather would do after he got word that Craig had gone through Adonia with his roughnecks. Mr. Flagg wouldn’t leave you here to face what was threatened.”

“I didn’t tell my grandfather who I was. Dick promised to keep the secret,” she faltered.

“Remember! Words have wings up in this region! I explained to you once, Miss Kennard, and you know what happened when I let loose that flock of them at Adonia—like a fool. I don’t dare to think about it!”He paced away from her; then he returned, calm again. “Mr. Flagg must have heard—he would keep in touch with what has been going on up here—and after he knew, it would be his style to let you go ahead and win out. He would understand what it is you’re trying to do. His sending that team, now that he is afraid of danger, proves that he knows.”

When she ran on ahead Latisan did not try to keep up with her; he was once again the drive boss of Flagg’s crew, a hired man; he had no excuse for meddling in the family affairs of his employers, he reflected, and in his new humility he was avoiding anything which might savor of inquisitive surveillance.

The man who had put the horses to the jumper in Adonia, the man whom she knew as Jeff, was the deputy whom Flagg had sent. He had come in haste—that was plain to her; he was mopping the flanks of the sweating bays.

The deference with which he touched his cap informed her fully as to the amount of knowledge possessed by the Flagg household. He unbuttoned, one after the other, his overcoat, his inner coat, his waistcoat, and from the deepest recess in his garments produced a sealed letter; his precautions in regard to it attested the value he put on a communication from the master to the master’s granddaughter.

The envelope was blank.

The men of the shift that had been relieved stood about her in a circle. The arrival of the bays was an event which matched the other sensational happenings of the crowded day, and she was conscious that, without meaning to be disrespectful, the men were hankering to be taken wholly into her confidence—were expecting that much favor from her.

Granddaughter of Echford Flagg she might be—but more than all she was one of the crew, that season, a companion who had inspired them, toiled with them, and triumphed with them. If any more good news had come they, as friends, were entitled to know it, their expressions told her. They were distinctly conveying to her their notion that she should stand there and read the letter aloud.

The hand which clutched the missive was trembling, and she was filled with dread in spite of the consoling thought that she had achieved so much. She was afraid to open the letter and she escaped out of the circle of inquiring faces and hid herself in her tent; even the crude flourish of importance displayed by the manner of Jeff in delivering the communication to her had its effect in making her fears more profound. The whims of old age—Flagg had dwelt on the subject! She remembered that when she was in the big house with Latisan, her grandfather had beat on the page of the Bible and had anathematized the ties of family in his arraignment of faults. He had been kind, after his fashion, when she was incognito, but now that he knew——

She ripped the envelope from the letter and opened the sheet; it was a broad sheet and had been folded many times to make it fit the envelope.

It was more like rude print than handwriting. At first she thought that her grandfather had been able to master a makeshift chirography with his left hand. But boldly at the top of the sheet, as a preface of apology, was this statement: “Dicktated to Dick and excuse looks and mesteaks. Hese a poor tool at writtin.”

Crouching on her bed of boughs, the sheet on her knees, her hands clutched into her wind-rumpled hair above her temples, she read the letter which her grandfather had contrived with the help of his drafted amanuensis.

To my Grand-daughter. He have to use short words and few. Dick is slow and can’t spel.