“His’n!” broke in Mrs. Sanders, identifying the locality joyously, and pointing Jepson out still more unmistakably with a long, bony index-finger. “Is it yours?” said the young stranger. “Well, the owner came and fired out our traps, one day, while we were gone, so we went to another deserted cabin, up near the summit of the mountain.” “Mighty cur’ous way ter be a-livin’,” commented Mrs. Sanders, with a very definite infusion of scorn. “An’ fur a silver mine, ez mought be in the mountings, an’ then agin moughtn’t. Look-a-hyar, stranger, ain’t ye ’quainted with nobody in Brumsaidge Cove mo’ ’spectable ’n Jake Baintree?” There was a sudden triumph in the young man’s face. He shook himself free from his unpalatable confessions, as if they had been a cloak falling from his shoulders. “I’m acquainted with some very respectable people,—very good people. I’m well acquainted with the Strobe family.” He had lived somewhat in the world, and was aware that in some places people have been known to prop their social standing by bragging of their acquaintances. He had never thought that this necessity would supervene for him in Broomsedge Cove. “Dell-law!” exclaimed Mrs. Sanders, seeming as delighted to meet the Strobes in the desolation of the stranger’s social circle—which had consisted, apparently, of Jake Baintree—as if she had encountered them in the solitude of a desert island. “Old Mis’ Strobe!” “Yes, old Mrs. Strobe,” he said, “and the young girls, Miss Marcella and little Isabel.” The impartial, judicial interest with which Teck Jepson had listened gave way suddenly. His eyes were deeply glowing, and fastened intently on the stranger’s face. His cheek had flashed darkly. Somehow the idea of the warning that Marcella had conveyed had suggested to his mind no personal association. She had told Baintree, perhaps, he had thought, or she had sent a message. But her name upon the stranger’s lips—the very sound of it odd and incongruous, with his unfamiliar accent and the unwonted and punctilious title—intimated abruptly the possibility of a personal interest, of a longer acquaintance, of a future of which Jepson had never dreamed. She had risked much,—with the transparent blacksmith to know that she was in possession of the secret,—she had risked much. And what, a dapper, slender, handsome young fool was this silver hungry stranger! “An’ Eli!” cried Mrs. Sanders in a shrill crescendo of pleasurable reminiscence. “I never knew him before he was injured. But I had a long talk with him this evening, and”—he drew out his watch composedly—“I promised him that I would come back if not too late, after I got through at the forge here. A very respectable family, and very hospitable.” XVII.