"Duke"--she turned to him suddenly, her eyes wide and luminous, her heart going so he could see the tremor of its vibrations in the lace at her throat--"I want you to lend me tomorrow morning, for one day, just one day, Duke--five hundred head of Vesta Philbrook's cattle." "That's a funny thing to ask, Grace," said he uneasily. "I want you to meet me over there where I cut the fence before sunup in the morning, and have everybody out of the way, so we can cut them out and drive them over here. You can manage it, if you want to, Duke. You will, if you--if you _care_." "If they were my cattle, Grace, I wouldn't hesitate a second." "You'll do it, anyhow, won't you, Duke, for me?" "What in the world do you want them for, just for one day?" "I can't explain that to you now, Duke, but I pledge you my honor, I pledge you everything, that they'll be returned to you before night, not a head missing, nothing wrong." "Does your father know--does he----" "It's for myself that I'm asking this of you, Duke; nobody else. It means--it means--_everything_ to me." "If they were my cattle, Grace, if they were my cattle," said he aimlessly, amazed by the request, groping for the answer that lay behind it. What could a girl want to borrow five hundred head of cattle for? What in the world would she get out of holding them in her possession one day and then turning them back into the pasture? There was something back of it; she was the innocent emissary of a crafty hand that had a trick to play. "We could run them over here, just you and I, and nobody would know anything about it," she tempted, the color back in her cheeks, her eyes bright as in the pleasure of a request already granted. "I don't like to refuse you even that, Grace." "You'll do it, you'll do it, Duke?" Her hand was on his arm in beguiling caress, her eyes were pleading into his. "I'm afraid not, Grace." Perhaps she felt a shading of coldness in his denial, for distrust and suspicion were rising in his cautious mind. It did not seem to him a thing that could be asked with any honest purpose, but for what dishonest one he had no conjecture to fit. "Are you going to turn me down on the first request I ever made of you, Duke?" She watched him keenly as she spoke, making her eyes small, an inflection of sorrowful injury in her tone. "If there's anything of my own you want, if there's anything you can name for me to do, personally, all you've got to do is hint at it once." "It's easy to say that when there's nothing else I want!" she said, snapping it at him as sharp as the crack of a little whip. "If there _was_ anything----" "There'll never be anything!" She got up, flashing him an indignant look. He stood beside her, despising the poverty of his condition which would not allow him to deliver over to her, out of hand, the small matter of five hundred beeves.