"Well, I'm here, and he was cooking himself a big supper when I left him at the ranch. It was a simple test, Mrs. Daly. If he scorned to abide by it, he might at least have written and put her on her guard, for he knew I was not bluffing. He pawed up the ground a bit, but he never did a thing. Then I cabled her just the question, Would she come? and she answered directly that she would. So I wired her the money. I signed myself Harshaw, and I told Micky what I'd done. "And whether he is sulking over my interference, I can't say, but from that moment he has never opened his mouth to me on the subject. I haven't a blessed notion what he means to do; judging by what he has done, nothing, I should say. But it may be he's only waiting to give me the full strength of the situation, seeing it's one of my own contriving. There's a sort of rum justice in it; but think of his daring to insult her so, for the sake of punishing me! "Now, what am I to say to her, Mrs. Daly? Am I to make a clean breast of it, and let her know the true and peculiar state of the case, including the fact that I'm in love with her myself? Or would you let that wait, and try to smooth things over for Micky, and get her to give him another chance? There was no sign of his moving last night; still, he may get here yet." The young man's spirits seemed to be rising as he neared the end of his tale, perhaps because he could see that it looked pretty black for "Micky." "If one could only know what he does mean to do, it would be simpler, wouldn't it?" I agreed that it would. Then I made the only suggestion it occurred to me to offer in the case--that he should go to his hotel and get his luncheon or breakfast, for I doubted if he'd had any, and leave me to meet Miss Comyn, and say to her whatever a kind Providence might inspire me with. My husband would call for him and fetch him up to dinner, I said; and after dinner, if Mr. Michael Harshaw had not arrived, or sent some satisfactory message, he could cast himself into the breach. "And I'm sorry for you," I said; "for I don't think you will have an easy time of it." "She can't do worse than hate me, Mrs. Daly; and that's better than sending me friendly little messages in her letters to Micky." I wish I could give you this story in his own words, or any idea of his extraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous good faith--as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was as convincing as a scene in comic opera. "By the way," said he, "I didn't encumber myself with much luggage this trip. I have nothing but the clothes I stand in." I made a reckless offer of my husband's evening things, which he as recklessly accepted, not knowing if he could get into them; but I thought he did not look so badly as he was, in his sun-faded corduroys, the whole of him from head to foot as pale as a plaster cast with dust, except his bright blue eyes, which had hard, dark circles around them.