She was mighty gentle about it—you know how sunny her face is—well, she just got grave and kind o’ faint-voiced, and said—Oh, you know what she said! She let me know there was another man. I didn’t ask her who, and when I found out, I lost my grip entirely. At first I thought I’d resign and get out of the country; but I couldn’t do it—I can’t yet. The chance of seeing her—of hearing from her once in a while—she never writes except on business for her father; but—you’ll laugh—I can’t see her signature without a tremor.” He smiled, but his eyes were desperately sad. “I ought to resign, because I can’t do my work as well as I ought to. As I ride the trail I’m thinking of her. I sit here half the night writing imaginary letters to her. And when I see her, and she takes my hand in hers—you know what a hand she has—my mind goes blank. Oh, I’m crazy! I admit it. I didn’t know such a thing could happen to me; but it has.”

“I suppose it’s being alone so much,” Wayland started to argue, but the other would not have it so.

“No, it’s the girl herself. She’s not only beautiful in body, she’s all sweetness and sincerity in mind. There isn’t a petty thing about her. And her happy smile—do you know, I have times when I resent that smile? How can she be so happy without me? That’s crazy, too, but I think it, sometimes. Then I think of the time when she will not smile—when that brute Belden will begin to treat her as he does his sisters—then I get murderous.”

As Wayland listened to this outpouring he wondered at the intensity of the forester’s passion. He marveled, too, at Berrie’s choice, for there was something fine and high in Landon’s worship. A college man with a mining engineer’s training, he should go high in the service. “He made the mistake of being too precipitate as a lover,” concluded Wayland. “His forthright courtship repelled her.”

Meanwhile his own troubles increased. Frank’s dislike had grown to an impish vindictiveness, and if the old man Meeker had any knowledge of his son’s deviltries, he gave no sign. Mrs. Meeker, however, openly reproved the scamp.

“You ought to be ashamed of worrying a sick man,” she protested, indignantly.

“He ain’t so sick as all that; and, besides, he needs the starch taken out of him,” was the boy’s pitiless answer.

“I don’t know why I stay,” Wayland wrote to Berea. “I’m disgusted with the men up here—they’re all tiresome except Landon—but I hate to slink away, and besides, the country is glorious. I’d like to come down and see you this week. May I do so? Please send word that I may.”

She did not reply, and wondering whether she had received his letter or not, he mounted his horse one beautiful morning and rode away up the trail with a sense of elation, of eager joy, with intent to call upon her at the ranch as he went by.

Hardly had he vanished among the pines when Clifford Belden rode in from his ranch on Hat Creek, and called at Meeker’s for his mail.

Frank Meeker was in the office, and as he both feared and disliked this big contemptuous young cattleman, he set to work to make him jealous.

“You want to watch this one-lung boarder of ours,” he warned, with a grin. “He’s been writing to Berrie, and he’s just gone down to see her. His highfalutin ways, and his fine white hands, have put her on the slant.”

Belden fixed a pair of cold, gray-blue eyes on his tormentor, and said: “You be careful of your tongue or I’ll put you on the slant.”

“I’m her own cousin,” retorted Frank. “I reckon I can say what I please about her. I don’t want that dude Easterner to cut you out. She guided him over here, and gave him her slicker to keep him dry, and I can see she’s terribly taken with him.