Alert as she could be, Nell wheeled to look at the man. Although there was no light in the room and the evening was drawing on, the singer knew that half-crouching figure at first glance. She saw, too, the flash of the weapon in the gambler’s hand. “Dick Beckworth! I might have known you’d come sneaking to a girl’s room to hide,” said Nell, her voice quite unshaken. “Put away that gun. I’m not the sheriff.” Dick was silent. But he had the grace to put away his gun. Nell said to Betty: “Has he scared you, honey? Don’t you mind. Dick the Devil has got his comeupance this time, I reckon. The minute he steps out of this house they’ll nab him. Somebody saw him sneak in by the back way. But nobody thought of his daring to come into your room. Come on, you, get out! Take your miserable carcass off to some other part of the house.” “Oh, Nell!” breathed Betty. “Don’t you be afraid, honey,” said the cabaret singer again. “This rascal knows me, I reckon. It’s too bad he wasn’t killed—like I thought he was—back last spring when I was fool enough to be caught by his sleek ways and talk. Oh, yes! I played the fool. And I come pretty near believing since that time that there wasn’t any decent men in the world. All because of that whelp.” For once Dick Beckworth had nothing to say. At another time he might have flouted the girl. But the moment was not propitious. He stood and glared from Nell to Betty, and back again; but said nothing. “Come! Beat it!” said Nell harshly. “Don’t you hear me?” “I am going to remain here,” Dick said in a low voice. “Right here.” “Not much!” Nell wheeled to open the door. “I’ll call ’em up. They are watching for you below.” “Nell!” gasped Betty. “You better speak for me,” sneered Dick. “I don’t reckon that you two girls will turn me over to the sheriff. Don’t forget, Nellie, that once I was your honey-boy.” The mining-camp girl’s whole person seemed to fire under this spur. Her face blazed. She was tense with wrath—wrath that she could not for the moment audibly express. But when she did speak her voice was as hard as ice and her accents as cold: “Dick Beckworth, you get out of here! March!” “Not much.” Nell had been riding. She never went abroad on horseback without wearing her belt and gun. The latter flashed into her hand too quickly for Dick to have again produced his weapon, had he so desired. “Put ’em up!” was Nell’s concise command. “Don’t flutter a finger wrong. I been thinking for months that I saw you go over that cliff to your death. Maybe I worried some over being the possible cause of your taking that drop. But I feel a whole lot different about you now, Dick Beckworth. Keep your hands up and march out of this room.” The man, sneering, his countenance torn with emotion, his eyes as glittering as those of an angered serpent, came forward into the middle of the room again. He was staring at Betty rather than at Nell. He said to the former: “You going to let me go out, Betty?” “Oh! Oh! I——”