But here Sonny could stand Brand’s badinage no longer and pulling away from Nance he ran to him, and clinging about his knees, begged forgiveness for the lie whose memory troubled his clear little soul. The man touched the unkempt small head with a tender hand. “Sure, old-timer,” he said gently; “that’s all right. A gentleman must lie when a lady commands—he couldn’t do anything else.” “You make me feel like a sinner!” said Nance, “I hope you’ll forgive me, too.” The man took Sonny’s hand as she made ready to leave and turned down the cañon with her. “We’ll form a guard-of-honor in token of that,” he said, “and in seeing you off we’ll invite you back again. Sonny would miss you now, you know. But just remember always, Miss Allison, please—that in a way we’re keeping out of sight—until—until some time in an uncertain future. Consider us a secret, will you not?” Nance Allison rode home to Nameless with her head in a whirl. Life, that had seemed to pass her by in her plodding labor and her patient bearing of trouble, had suddenly touched her with a flaming finger. She had found mystery and affection in the silence of Blue Stone Cañon—and now there was something else, a strange vibrant element, thin as ether and intangible as wind, a sense of elation, of excitement. She felt a surge within her of some nameless fire, an uplift, a peculiar gladness. “Mammy,” she said straightly when she stepped in at the cabin door, “I’ve found the man!” “Whew! Some statement, Sis!” cried Bud as he shambled across the sill behind her. “What’s he like?” “Why—I don’t just know. He’s tall—and he wears clothes that have once been fine—and he has the straightest eyes I ever saw. His name’s Fair—Brand Fair—and he’s some relation to Sonny, for that is his name, too.” “I hope you gave him that piece of your mind you laid out to?” pursued Bud. “Why, no—no,” said Nance wonderingly, looking at him with half-seeing eyes, “I don’t—believe—I did!” Mrs. Allison looked up from her work of getting supper at the stove. “I mind me,” she said, “of the first time I ever set eyes on your Pappy. I was goin’ to frail him good because he’d run his saddle horse a-past th’ cart I was drivin’, kickin’ a terrible dust all over my Sunday dress—it was camp-meetin’ at Sharfell’s Corners—an’ then—he laughed an’ talked to me—an’ I forgot my mad spell. His eyes jest coaxed th’ wrath out of my heart—then an’ ever after.” “Why, Mammy,” said Nance, “that’s just what happened here! This man talked to me and I forgot my mad spell! I never said a thing I’d stayed to say! And I promised to keep the secret of him and Sonny in the cañon.” “H’m!” said Bud as he sidled into his chair and smoothed his bronze hair, wet from his ablutions at the well, “H’m—Mammy, why’d you tell her that? I wish you hadn’t.” “Why?” said Nance, but her brother shook his head. CHAPTER IX GOLDEN MAGIC