“Have you met a man named Loring, one of the hoist engineers?” she asked quietly. Iverach looked up suddenly. “Loring? What is his first name?” “Stephen.” “I have not met him here; but if he is the man I think he is, I happen to have heard something of him in the East. A friend of his asked me to keep an eye out for him if I came to any of the camps in Arizona. In fact, he told me to keep two eyes open for him, one to find him with, and the other to look out for him after I had found him. He intimated that Loring was not a reliable character, to say the least.” “A friend of his, did you say?” “I judged that he had been at one time, but from the trend of his conversation his friendship must have been a thing of the dim past. Among other pleasant things about Loring he told me that—” “Did he say anything about his ability as a hoist engineer? That, I think, is the only thing with which we are concerned here,” interrupted Jean. “You know, Archie, there is a proverb to the effect that ‘a man’s past is his own.’” “Then all I can say is that Loring is not to be envied his ownership,” Iverach went on, ignoring the danger signal of Jean’s slightly contemptuous manner. “And as for discussing his past, I cannot see any harm in repeating what every one knows about a man.” Ordinarily Mr. Cameron was the most fair-minded of men, and judged people by what he knew of them, not by what he heard; but he had a particular antipathy to Loring, caused by dislike of his type, and also he was not sorry to have Jean hear a few truths about the man whose companionship he dreaded for her as much as he resented her championship of him. “What was it you were going to say about Loring?” he asked of Iverach, as he handed him a cigar. Iverach paused to clip it carefully with a gold cigar-cutter that hung from his watch-chain. “Of course it is only hearsay that I am repeating—” Archibald began hesitatingly. “Then why repeat it?” asked Jean ironically. “Oh, the most interesting things in the world are those that you accept on hearsay,” he laughed. “I forget the details of Loring’s history, but this friend intimated that Loring, when engaged to his guardian’s daughter, borrowed large sums of money from the guardian, and—well, neither the engagement nor the money ever materialized and Stephen Loring is not much sought after in that neighborhood. I met the girl once,” he went on, “and I don’t blame Loring. She was the kind of young woman whose eyes light up only over causes; but the money part of the story, if true, is rather an ugly fact. Dexterity with other people’s money is not an agreeable form of deftness.” “Utterly contemptible,” snapped Mr. Cameron, flicking the ashes from his cigar onto the table with a prodigal gesture, only to brush them onto an envelope with the afterthought of an exact nature. Jean rose and walked toward the door. “At what time do you ride this afternoon?” her cousin called after her.