"I will not! Never in my life will I enter the house of a Lorrigan!" Mary Hope brushed a palm against her forehead, straightened herself as if she resented her weakness, wished to hold herself aloof from him. She did not look at Lance, but stared across the narrow valley to the sage-clothed bluff beyond. "Why not? You've just come from the Lorrigans, haven't you?" Lance studied her face. "You must have, or you wouldn't be on this trail." "I went down to pay for the schoolhouse, since your father took the piano away.--And he would not take the money, and he said he would burn the house if I don't teach in it--and I'll die before ever I'll open the door again, unless he takes the money. And he said if I left the money he would throw it down the crevice yonder--and he would _do_ it! And do you think I'll be under any obligation to Tom Lorrigan? You called my father hard, but your father is the hardest man that ever lived. The Lorrigans shall _not_--" Lance laughed, set her hat wrong side before on her head, tucked the elastic band under her chin, laughed again when she pettishly removed it and set the hat straight. "I wouldn't worry over the schoolhouse right now--nor Tom Lorrigan either," he said. "Look at your horse down there. If you're all right, I'll go down and see how many bones he's broken. You had a chance for a nasty pile-up. Do you know that?" "I'm grateful," said Mary Hope soberly. "But it was Lorrigan meanness brought me here; it was a Lorrigan got me into the trouble now, and a Lorrigan got me out of it. It's _always_ the Lorrigans." "Yes, and a Lorrigan's got to see you a little farther before you're through with them, so cheer up." Lance laughed again, an amused little chuckle that was calculated to take the droop out of Mary Hope's lips, and failed completely. He saw her cheeks were reddening, saw too that her face gave evidence of no particular bodily pain. She had probably fainted from fright, more than anything else, he decided, and her fright was now forgotten in her animosity. He slid off the bank, went down to where Jamie lay, took him by the bridle and urged him to stand. Which Jamie, after one or two scrambling attempts, managed to do. But the horse was hurt. He could scarcely hobble to the trail. Without paying any visible attention to Mary Hope, Lance removed her saddle from Jamie, and brought it up to where she sat dispiritedly watching him. His manner was brisk, kind enough, but had an aloofness which made her keenly aware that he accepted her adherence to the feud and tacitly took his own place with the Lorrigans. Over this emergency she felt that he had unspokenly set a flag of truce. His attitude depressed her.