Lee stopped at the steps, astonished to see his daughter and this man in talk together. Yesterday he would have resented it bitterly, but now the situation was changed. Something of so much greater magnitude had occurred that he was too perturbed to cherish his feud for the present. All night he had carried with him the dreadful secret he suspected. He could not look Melissy in the face, nor could he discuss the robbery with anybody. The one fact that overshadowed all others was that his little girl had gone out and held up a stage, that if she were discovered she would be liable to a term in the penitentiary. Laboriously his slow brain had worked it all out. A talk with Jim Budd had confirmed his conclusions. He knew that she had taken this risk in order to save him. He was bowed down with his unworthiness, with shame that he had dragged her into this horrible tangle. He was convinced that Jack Flatray would get at the truth, and already he was resolved to come forward and claim the whole affair as his work. "I've been apologizing to Mr. Morse for insulting him, dad," the girl said immediately. Her father passed a bony hand slowly across his unshaven chin. "That's right, honey. If you done him a meanness, you had ought to say so." "She has said so very handsomely, Mr. Lee," spoke up Morse. "I've been warning him, dad, that he ought to be more careful how he rides around alone, with the cattlemen feeling the way they do." "It's a fact they feel right hot under the collar. You're ce'tainly a temptation to them, Mr. Morse," the girl's father agreed. The mine owner shifted the subject of conversation. He was not a man of many impulses, but he yielded to one now. "Can't we straighten out this trouble between us, Mr. Lee? You think I've done you an injury. Perhaps I have. If we both mean what's right, we can get together and fix it up in a few minutes." The old Southerner stiffened and met him with an eye of jade. "I ain't asking any favors of you, Mr. Morse. We'll settle this matter some day, and settle it right. But you can't buy me off. I'll not take a bean from you." The miner's eyes hardened. "I'm not trying to buy you off. I made a fair offer of peace. Since you have rejected it, there is nothing more to be said." With that he bowed stiffly and walked away, leading his horse. Lee's gaze followed him and slowly the eyes under the beetled brows softened. "Mebbe I done wrong, honey. Mebbe I'd ought to have given in. I'm too proud to compromise when he's got me beat. That's what's ailin' with me. But I reckon I'd better have knuckled under." The girl slipped her arm through his. "Sometimes I'm just like that too, daddy. I've just _got_ to win before I make up. I don't blame you a mite, but, all the same, we should have let him fix it up."