What a romance that old father had woven about the life of his son! How skilfully and craftily he had planned so that Oliver would be thrown on his own resources for an answer when he came face to face with the question! How cleverly Jessamy had carried out the part entrusted to her, despite her aversion to intrigues and plottings! Step by step she had led him on till at last the question confronted him, just as it had confronted his father before him. To gain possession of the gems would be a simple matter. They were on his land somewhere--were his by every right in law. He had but to invoke the protection of the keepers of the peace against the Indians, break the seals of the long envelope, and dig in the place indicated by the map this envelope contained. But there was one thing which doubtless Peter Drew had not foreseen in his careful planning. He could not have known that his son was to fall desperately in love with the guiding star that he had appointed for him. And Oliver Drew knew in his heart that if he robbed the Indians of these gems, which were to them only a symbol and had no meaning connected with worldly wealth, he would lose the girl. The only thing that stood between Jessamy and him, he now believed, was her uncertainty of what his answer to the question would be. In her staunch heart she respected the belief of the Showut Poche-dakas, and to her the gems as a symbol were as worthy of her reverence as the Sacred Book of the Christians. "I have as much reverence for a bareheaded Indian girl on her knees to the Sun God as for a hooded nun counting her beads," she had said. Oliver stared at the inside of the cabin door, scarred and carved and full of bullet holes--at JESSAMY, MY SWEETHEART. Peter Drew could not have foreseen this phase of the situation. In securing the gems Oliver Drew not only would lose his self-respect and make his father's thirty years of sacrifice a mockery, but he would lose the girl he loved. So Oliver took small credit to himself when he rose from his desk at eleven o'clock, his mind made up. He placed the letter unopened in his shirt front, and went out and saddled Poche. Then he rode to the backbone and wormed his way along it toward Lime Rock. Jessamy was there ahead of him, sitting erect on White Ann's back, gazing upon the rugged objects of her daily adoration. "Well," she said, "you've come," and her level eyes searched him through and through. "Yes," he replied, riding to her side, "I've come; and my mind's made up." She raised her dark brows in an attempt to betoken a mild struggle between politeness and indifference; but the hand on her saddle horn trembled, and the red had gone out of her cheeks. "I must get out of here tomorrow," he said, "and go to Los Angeles. I've just about enough money to take me there and back; but I have the unbounded faith of an amateur in several farm articles now in editors' hands." She lowered black lashes over her eyes and nodded slowly up and down.