"Just that she was much obliged to you for the information you promised to send her about something or other. It ain't anything to send you up the river for, Red." "What did you tell Miss Leland?" "Miss Leland? Oh, Wanda, you mean." Mr. Dart repeated the tale he had told Wanda with the many fanciful embellishments which it seemed necessary for him to give to any story that he found it necessary to repeat. "I sure enough boosted your game, Red. Say, kid, it worked for fair. You ought to have--" Even after the threats which Wayne Shandon made to him that night Willie Dart stayed on. Shandon declared he would drive him off the place with a buggy whip, and Willie Dart said that he'd come back if he was chased away. Shandon mentioned the police of New York, and Dart asked him reproachfully if he delighted in wounding him in his most sensitive part; wanted to know if his Noble Benefactor was the sort to drive a man back into the mire he had just emerged from, to thwart all effort to lead a pure, sweet, rural existence. Finally Shandon contented himself by forbidding Dart to meddle in the future with anything not in any way a part of his own business; and nourished the secret hope that a few weeks of the humdrum of mountain life would tire this sparrow of the city gutters. Whereupon, when alone with his big book and a fresh cigar, Willie Dart soliloquised as follows: "He's up against a good many things, poor old Red is. He's as bad in love with Wanda as she is with him. Her old man is soured on Red and is making the toboggan slide all bumpy. Then there's some sort of trouble with Ettinger. There's a deal on somewhere I ain't wise to, and Red ain't in on it. Wanda's old man is in on it, so's the Weak Sister, meaning Garth, so's a gent name of Sledgehammer Hume. I guess time's ripe for little Willie Dart to mix in and see what's what. He's a square kid, is Red, and I'm going to help him put his affairs in order." And then making himself comfortable as he pondered in the biggest chair in the well furnished living room, he sighed, twisted his cigar a moment thoughtfully, sighed again, put his feet on the table and turned to the pages of the big book. His fancy was caught by numerous and attractive illustrations in a volume dealing with the mythology of the ancients, and he was soon convinced that he was acquiring a scholarly knowledge of the history of the old Greeks and Romans. Wayne Shandon was distinctly surprised the next morning as he entered the corral to encounter Sledge Hume sitting a sweating horse and evidently in wait for him. "You were looking for me?" he asked shortly. The last time he had spoken to Hume was to quarrel with him, and to be drawn into hot words with Arthur because of him. He made no pretence at making his tone more than coldly civil. "Yes," returned the other as bluntly. "I rode over from old man Leland's on business."