The discovery was made too late for them to stop. Indeed, Garry Knapp increased his speed, picked her up in his arms and it seemed to Dorothy that they fairly flew over the open water, landing with a resonant ring of steel upon the safe ice beyond. For the moment that she was held tightly in the young man’s arms, she clung to him with something besides fear. “Oh, Garry!” she gasped when he set her down again. “Some jump, eh?” returned the young man coolly. They skated on again without another word. CHAPTER XXV GARRY BALKS The major was ready to see Garry Knapp at nine o’clock the next morning. He was suffering one of his engagements with the enemy rheumatism, and there really was a strong reason for his having put off this interview until the shy Westerner had become somewhat settled at The Cedars as a guest. Dorothy took Garry up to the major’s room after breakfast, and they found him well-wrapped in a rug, sitting in his sun parlor which overlooked the lawns of The Cedars. The young man from the West could not help being impressed by the fact that he was the guest of a family that was well supplied with this world’s goods—one that was used to luxury as well as comfort. Is it strange that the most impressive point to him was the fact that he had no right to even _think_ of trying to win Dorothy Dale? When he had awakened that morning and looked over the luxurious furnishings of his chamber and the bathroom and dressing room connected with it, he had told himself: “Garford Knapp, you are in wrong! This is no place for a cowpuncher from the Western plains. What little tad of money you can sell your ranch for won’t put you in any such class as these folk belong to. “And as for thinking of that girl—Great Scot! I’d make a fine figure asking any girl used to such luxury as this to come out and share a shack in Desert City or thereabout, while I punched cattle, or went to keeping store, or tried to match my wits in real estate with the sharks that exploit land out there. “Forget it, Garford!” he advised himself, grimly. “If you can make an honest deal with this old major, make it and then clear out. This is no place for you.” He had, therefore, braced himself for the interview. The major, eyeing him keenly as he walked down the long room beside Dorothy, made his own judgment—as he always did—instantly. When Dorothy had gone he said frankly to the young man: “Mr. Knapp, I’m glad to see you. I have heard so much about you that I feel you and I are already friends.” “Thank you, sir,” said Garry, quietly, eyeing the major with as much interest as the latter eyed him. “When my daughter was talking one day about you and the land you had in the market adjoining the Hardin tract it struck me that perhaps it would be a good thing to buy,” went on the major, briskly. “So I set our lawyers on your trail.” “So Miss Dorothy tells me, sir,” the young man said.