Once more her thoughts turned to her tall Stranger, but instead of dwelling dreamily upon his spoken words, his easy, graceful movement of frame, or the deep, intense look that she had more than once surprised in his blue-grey eyes; they leaped at once to his meeting with Dalzene and the apparent comradery with which they had walked down the street and entered the saloon. As the picture recalled itself, a new thought leaped into her brain. Could it be possible that, knowing as he did, of her dilemma, he himself had contrived the arrest of her father? But if so, what had Dalzene to do with it? Surely, her interests were not Dalzene’s, and if the stranger really had her interests at heart he could have nothing in common with the hooch-runner of Rampart. With a shrug, she gave it up. She would know soon. She must go down and have her own name substituted for that of her father in the entry book. She was to dine with the Stranger at six, and afterward they were to complete the plan for preventing her father from driving the race. It was after dark when she returned to the hotel to find her Stranger waiting, and together they entered the dining room where the man led the way to a small table in the center of which a mass of richly-hued blossoms blazed from a glittering cut glass bowl. “Oh!” exclaimed the girl, glancing swiftly from the riot of color into the smiling eyes of the man, “Oh, how wonderful!” “Do you like ’em?” he smiled. “Like them! They are the most beautiful flowers I ever saw! Where in the world did you get them?” “There’s a kind of a Dutchman that raises ’em all under glass,” he explained, “I got all he had, except the ones that they’ve got ordered for the big wreath that they hang around the neck of the winner of the Sweepstakes. You’ll be wearin’ that, too--if we can figure out how we’re goin’ to keep your dad from drivin’. But, really, Miss Gordon, I wish you wouldn’t tackle it. Let me drive the race for you. I can handle the dogs--you know that, now. You can’t depend on the weather this time of year, and if it kicks up a bad storm out there without any timber to run to, it’s goin’ to be hell--just plain hell!” The girl smiled at the intensity of the man’s words, and as she spoke she looked searchingly into his eyes: “Don’t worry about me,” she said, “All my life I have lived in the North. I’m not afraid of the storms. I’m no _chechako_.” “No, you are no _chechako_” the man replied, gravely, “But, even the sourdoughs don’t always pull through.” “Do you know where my father is, this minute?” Surprised at the abruptness of the question, the man met her searching gaze: “Why, no. Fooling around with a boiler somewhere, I suppose.” “He is in jail,” announced the girl, noting the genuinely shocked expression that leaped into the man’s face. “In ... jail!” he uttered the words slowly, as though trying to grasp their meaning. “In jail! What do you mean?”