According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as she came quickly to meet him, and welcomed him with a smile that was perhaps less bright, a blush that was certainly deeper than usual. He spoke no word of greeting at first, only looked at her as if her face were a magnet that drew and held his eyes, then put his arm gently round her waist and bent his dark head to her fair one, and kissed her with infinite tenderness.

Barbara yielded to his caress with the soft yielding of a woman who loves. She did not belong to the class of those who, deceived by one, distrust all thenceforth—who hate all men for one false one's sake. And the time had come which she had never thought to see, when she—even she, Barbara Thorne, the deserted, slighted, jilted, held up to the insult of the world's pity—yet trusted, loved again. For this man's devotion had been balm to her bruised spirit—a healing balsam poured into the still smarting wounds of her once crushed and outraged pride.

"All alone, my little lady?" he said, softly.

"Yes; Tom and Hatty went off this morning."

"Been lonesome?"

"Oh, no; I've had plenty to keep me brisk and busy."

Colonel Jeff cast a glance at the table, at the photograph which lay there face upwards. "And who have you there?" he inquired, but not suspiciously. Barbara conquered a foolish impulse to put out her hand to intercept his as he went to pick up the portrait.

He glanced at it, first easily, then keenly, and his dark brows lowered ominously. Colonel Jeff did not look like a person to offend—if one had the choice.

"You are thinking of that blackguard still?" he said; and in his tone anger and pain struggled equally matched.

"I found that photograph by chance while I was looking over a drawer full of old papers," she replied, answering the spirit rather than, the letter of his words.

"And you were looking at it as if—as if—it was all the world to you!" he retorted.

"My looks belied me, then. It is a memory only—and a painful one," she said, with the slightest shade of a tremor in her sweet voice.

"Only a memory?" fixing the stern questioning of his piercing eyes upon her.

"If it were more, should I be what I am to you?" she replied, meeting his look frankly.

"What are you to me?" he demanded. The words might have sounded brutal had the tone been different, but though they were harshly spoken, they bore no suggestion of denial or rebuff, no faintest hint of insulting disclaimer. "You know," he continued, "we both know, that you're the one woman in the world to me—but what more? What beyond that? Are you the woman who cares for me?"

"HE GLANCED AT IT."

"For you more than for all the world beside."

"More than for——?" He cast a frowning glance at the photograph.

"Immeasurably more," she answered steadily, and the unconquerable truth in her forced her to add the word, "to-day!"

"To-day?" he echoed, with mingled anger and reluctant admiration. "Barbara, you are too honest to deny——" He paused with a quick indrawing of the breath and setting of the teeth.

"To deny the past?" her soft voice interposed as he paused. "Yes! I could never deny it! You know, Rick, you always knew, that I could not give you my yesterdays!"

"Barbara, I am jealous of those yesterdays," he said, after a silence.

"Why begrudge the yesterdays," she pleaded, "when all the to-morrows are yours?"

His dark eyes kindled with a deep and tender glow.

"All? All? None to share with me, or rob me? All mine?" He framed her delicate fair face between his big brown hands, and held it thus gently upturned to his as he gazed intently into it. "Barbara," he added, "do you know it would be a bad thing for any man who came between me and you?"

"No one could," she assured him earnestly.

Colonel Jeff clasped her in his strong arms.

"Is that so, indeed, my darling? my Barbara! my own one love," he whispered, pressing her to his heart.

"You must not be jealous of the past, dear Rick," she murmured.

"Forgive me my blundering roughness," he entreated her. "I ought not to have spoken so to you. Forgive me if I have hurt you, Barbara!"

"It did hurt me a little," she admitted. "Let us leave the dead bones to rest in their grave."

"I will never dig them up again," he promised her. "But put that away," he added, pushing the portrait aside. "It's very like him, and I hate to see it near you!"

Colonel Jeff had known Oliver Desmond, at least by sight and passing acquaintance, and he knew—as who did not?—Barbara Thorne's story; who had not heard the story of the bride deserted at the very altar, waiting in her bridal dress amongst the assembled party of her own and his friends—waiting for the bridegroom who never came?

Sometimes even now, when the memory of that horrible day came over Barbara, she shivered and turned sick and cold at heart. Only since she had known Rick Jeffreys loved her she had thought of it less; the scar of the old wound had ceased to throb.

At first she had thought Oliver Desmond was dead; felt sure that nothing but death could have kept him from her at that hour! But afterwards she and all the world—their world—learnt that he had left her for another; the one palliation of the cruel wrong and insult he had inflicted on his innocent and trusting betrothed being that it was no new love, but the resurrection of an old, supposed-to-be-dead passion that had lured him from her. Then they heard now and again rumours of Oliver Desmond's career. It seemed to be a downward one. They heard of his drinking and gambling, sinking from bad to worse; of losses, of utter ruin. Now for years they had heard nothing of him at all; he had sunk out of knowledge, gone down under the storm of not unmerited misfortune; and his world knew him no more.

Their little differences made up, Rick Jeffreys spent a happy hour with Barbara, stayed until the golden haze of sunset was stealing soft and slow over the shadows of the sombre pine forest and the azure radiance of the sky; then he had an appointment to meet an old comrade in Eden City, and he tore himself reluctantly away from the Saucel Ranch—ready at the last moment to throw over his engagement and stay, if Barbara had urged him.

The shades of evening had closed when Barbara, having watched her stalwart lover out of sight, went into the kitchen, on domestic cares intent. It was very dark there, and she set the outer-door, which led into the court-yard, wide open to let in such light as there was, while she put a fresh log on the low wood fire, and prepared to light the lamp and make herself some tea. She was thus engaged when she heard a step outside the open door—not the quick, confident step of a friendly visitor, but a hurried yet hesitating tread—a tread that suggested skulking and hanging about.

It was a late hour for tramps, and Barbara, brave woman though she was, looked round a little anxiously, to see who the stranger might be. She had but just caught a glimpse of an evidently tired and travel-worn wayfarer—a haggard, dishevelled figure—when he spoke, raising his hat as he did so, with the courteous gesture of a gentleman. "Excuse me, madam, but can you give me a cup of water and a piece of bread, and shelter for an hour?"

As he spoke, Barbara glanced up with a start. That voice, it struck upon her ear like an echo from the past. And even in the