In the scuffed sand before the corral gate Tom made a small fire, with a few crumpled papers and one small book, which he tore apart and fed, leaf by leaf, to the flames. The light showed him grimly smiling, when he tilted his head and looked up at Lance who watched him. "So you'n the Douglas kid is figuring on getting hitched! Well, don't ever try to eye her down like you done to yore dad. She'll brain yuh, likely--if you wait long enough for her to make up her mind." Lance laughed. Up at the house Belle heard him and caught her breath. She stared hard at the three forms silhouetted like Rembrandt figures around the little fire, started toward them and stopped. She was a wise woman, was Belle. Some things a woman may know--and hide the knowledge deep in her heart, and in the hiding help her mate. Black Rim folk, who always knew so much of their neighbors' affairs, once more talked and chortled and surmised, and never came within a mile of the truth. The young college rooster had come home to the Devil's Tooth, they gossiped, and had a row with Al; so Al left home, and Duke too. The Lorrigans always had been hard to get along with, but that Lance--he sure must be a caution to cats, the way he'd cleaned off the ranch. Marrying the Douglas girl, and taking that paralyzed old lady right to the ranch, had probably had a lot to do with it. Lance might be willing to forget that old trouble with Scotty, but the rest of the Lorrigans sure never would. And it was queer, too, how all that rustling talk petered out. Mebby there hadn't been much in it, after all. Not even Mary Hope guessed why she and Lance were left so completely in charge of the ranch. Sometimes, when the invalid was captious and showed too plainly that she preferred Belle's playing and singing to the musical efforts of her own daughter, and scrawled impatient questions about Belle's return, Mary Hope would wonder if Tom Lorrigan really hated her, and if her coming had practically driven him out of his own home. She would cry a little, then,--unless Lance happened to be somewhere near. If he were, there was no crying for Mary Hope. "He's a good son," Mother Douglas once wrote, "I wish Aleck was alive, to see how the Lord has changed the Lorrigans." THE END THE NOVELS OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. DANGEROUS DAYS. A brilliant story of married life. A romance of fine purpose and stirring appeal. THE AMAZING INTERLUDE. Illustrations by The Kinneys. The story of a great love which cannot be pictured--an interlude--amazing, romantic. LOVE STORIES. This book is exactly what its title indicates, a collection of love affairs--sparkling with humor, tenderness and sweetness. "K." Illustrated. K. LeMoyne, famous surgeon, goes to live in a little town where beautiful Sidney Page lives. She is in training to become a nurse. The joys and troubles of their young love are told with keen and sympathetic appreciation.