For a moment there was silence while a bird called sharply from a pine top and the voice of the little stream became subtly audible. It seemed to the man that all his values of life had suddenly become shifted, changed. The commonplace had become the unreal, the unlikely the familiar. Guns and threats and racing horses with a woman for prize became on the moment natural events in this hidden setting. And what a woman she was! He looked up in her face again and saw there sweetness and strength, and grim purpose beyond his conception. He knew that her words were downright, and that they meant no more to her than duty to be done, a conscience cleared of debt. He glanced at the hand lying so quietly on the pommel and thought of it as stained with blood. At the fancy he frowned and mentally shook himself. Then, with an impulse wholly beyond his command, he reached up and laid his own hand over that one on the pommel. "Miss Last," he said gravely, "I have no words to express what I feel this moment about Lost Valley and its people. Will you get down and let me show you my house, here in my glade?" Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did not remove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be conscious of it. "Why should I?" she asked presently, "you don't owe me anything. I sent you away from my house. I wouldn't have come here if I'd known where I was goin'. It was a chance." "Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in my big chair. Will you come?" Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft and gentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. The man himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drab trousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tan leather belt and a soft woolen shirt of the same drab color. It lay open at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as a woman's. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. The dark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the red blood pulsed, like dusky shadows. A strange man, surely. Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she had known. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere "below," and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in the Valley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself and Jim Last. This man was from "below," too, yet he was unlike. While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look. Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, dropped El Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder. "All right," she said briefly, "but I won't stay any longer than I let you stay." For the first time Kenset laughed. "Twenty minutes, then," he said, "I don't think you let me exceed that limit."