He spoke with an easy and most disquieting assurance, but Joan had enough of that quality to meet with him in the gate. She had always been a good fighter; she had stood by her husband often enough in the early days of the estancia, when his nerve would have failed him but for her; and she was for putting up to-night the best fight of her whole long, active life. Money, to her thinking, they could make again, old as they were, if the need came. But they could not open their hearts to a second Cynthia, even if they could find one. "Nonsense," she answered boldly. "Her name is Cynthia Daventry." "Where was she born, then?" asked the reaper. "In Patagonia." "Never in this world," cried the man. "She was born in Concepcion, and that's her farthest south." Joan shrugged her shoulders. "We ought to know. She is my husband's niece." A grin overspread the reaper's face. "And is that so?" he asked, in a mock surprise. "I wasn't aware of it." "Well, you are now," said Joan. "Yes, and the news alters our relations altogether, doesn't it?" he said pleasantly. He tossed his battered hat upon the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down in it at his ease, his legs stretched out, his hands deep in his pockets. He nodded familiarly to Joan. "How do you do, sis?" He turned his face toward Mr. Daventry, "You have got a nice little place, brother Robert. Shows what honest work can do if persevered with day after day for a great number of consecutive years. Quite a nice little place. You haven't, by any chance, got a nice little cigar, too, have you, Robert, for your long-lost brother?" Robert Daventry's face grew red, and the veins swelled upon his forehead. He was a man quickly moved to passion, and quick, too, the passion exhausted, to swing back into doubts and hesitations. He blew either hot or cold, and, sooner or later, he was sure to blow cold. Now, however, his temper was up, and he brought his great fist down with violence upon the table. "What do you mean by your insolence?" he shouted "Stand up!" Joan laid a hand upon the old man's arm to restrain him. The reaper, for his part, never budged from his attitude. "You have got a nerve," he said. "You tell me a pack of lies--that's all right, you've got money. But when I take you at your word, it's 'insolence' and 'stand up.' How's that, if you please?" He sat and laughed for a little in contemptuous jerks. "Your niece, indeed! The girl's my daughter." Neither Joan nor Robert believed him for a moment. They thought of Cynthia, and compared that image at their hearts with the actual man who sprawled on the chair in front of them. Robert counted him up, his heavy features, his grime-engrained, spoilt hands, the whole degraded, unkempt look of him. Cynthia's father! The claim was preposterous. "Her father!" cried Robert Daventry, leaning across the table. "Look at yourself in the glass!"