A few words of quasi-introduction and explanation between Vanderlyn, Clara and the lawyer followed; and Horace Townsend, who had come up the mountain without any lady and only in the casual companionship of a man who continually rode away and left him alone, found himself ready to go down it with the fairest member of the company in charge! Had nothing else intervened since the ride up from Littleton to the Profile and that long, steady glance of admiration which had then been bestowed upon the sweet face and auburn hair,--what a dangerous proximity this might have proved! But the human heart, expansive as it may be, has not quite the capacity of a stage-coach or a passenger-car; and to prevent falling in desperate love with one fascinating woman thrown in one's way, there is perhaps no guard so potent as being in real or fancied desperate love with another! Halstead Rowan and the lady whom Townsend had reason to believe the object of his hope and his despair, had not been flung together and apart from others, for one moment during the day--Mr. Frank Vanderlyn had taken especially good care in that respect; though the lawyer had little cause to doubt that if both could have had their choice of companionship, they would have stood side by side and without others too near, by the High Altar which crowned the summit of the mountain, and spoken words difficult to unsay again during the lifetime of either. But if he had not been alone with Clara Vanderlyn, there is equally little doubt that he had looked at her much oftener than at the most admired point of scenery on the route. And as Frank Vanderlyn strolled away to his horse, and Townsend, with the lady obviously under his charge, was preparing to mount, he saw Rowan, with one foot in the stirrup and the other on the ground, looking over at him and his companion, with the most comical expression of wonder on his face that could well have been compressed into the same extent of physiognomy. The heart of the new knight-errant, which must have been a soft one or he would never have labored under that weakness, smote him at the thought of his apparent desertion; and with a word of apology he stepped away from the lady and approached the dismounted amateur Comanche. "You don't mean to say that you are going to----" said the latter, and he nodded his head comically and yet a little pitifully towards Clara Vanderlyn. "Ride down with Miss Vanderlyn? Yes!" answered the lawyer. "And who the deuce asked you to do it, I should like to know?" "Her brother." "Phew-w-w!" A prolonged whistle, very characteristic and significant. Townsend, in a word, explained the affair. "All right!" said the Illinoisan. "But, look here, old fellow! You haven't arranged this affair yourself, eh? No meetings on a single track, you know!" "Not a bit of it!" laughed Townsend at the professional illustration. "Confidence for confidence! Have you not seen more closely than _that_?"