“Perhaps I ought to tell Alan,” he mused, “but he 'll find it out soon enough; and, hang it all, I can' t tell him how I feel about his own sister, after all the rot I've stuffed into him.” XXX [Illustration: 9260] HE next morning, as soon as he was up, Alan went to his sister's room. He found her dressed and ready for him. She was seated before a cheerful grate-fire, looking over a magazine she had brought to pass the time on the train. “Come in,” she said, pleasantly enough, he reflected, now that Miller was not present to absorb her attention. “I expected you to get up a little earlier. Those guns down at the bar-room just about daybreak waked me, and I couldn't go to sleep again. There is no use denying it, Al, we have a barbarous way of amusing ourselves up here in North Georgia.” He went in and stood with his back to the fire, still unable to rid his brow of the frown it had worn the night before. “Oh, I reckon you've got too citified for us,” he said, “along with other accomplishments that fast set down there has taught you.” Adele laid her book open on her lap. “Look here, Alan,” she said, quite gravely. “What's the matter with you?” “Nothing, that I know of,” he said, without meeting her direct gaze. “Well, there is,” she said, as the outcome of her slow inspection of his clouded features. He shrugged his shoulders and gave her his eyes steadily. “I don't like the way you and Miller are carrying on.” He hurled the words at her sullenly. “You see, I know him through and through.” “Well, that's all right,” she replied, not flinching from his indignant stare; “but what's that got to do with my conduct and his?” “You allow him to be too familiar with you,” Alan retorted. “He's not the kind of a man for you to--to act that way with. He has flirted with a dozen women and thrown them over; he doesn't believe in the honest love of a man for a woman, or the love of a woman for a man.” “Ah, I am at the first of this!” Adele, instead of being put down by his stormy words, was smiling inwardly. Her lips were rigid, but Alan saw the light of keen amusement in her eyes. “Is he _really_ so dangerous? That makes him doubly interesting. Most girls love to handle masculine gunpowder. Do you know, if I was Dolly Barclay, for instance, an affair with you would not be much fun, because I'd be so sure of you. The dead level of your past would alarm me.” “Thank Heaven, all women are not alike!” was the bolt he hurled at her. “If you knew as much about Ray Miller as I do, you'd act in a more dignified way on a first acquaintance with him.”