He puffed thoughtfully for several minutes, while the girl gazed into the leaping flames, silent, sensing that her companion was nerving himself to lay his troubles before her. Finally he knocked the dottle from his pipe, pocketed it, and looked at her with a brotherly smile. “I have decided sooner than I thought I should,” he began. “So you may as well know the worst to-night. I don’t think I’ll have reached a better solution by morning.” He smiled again, patiently, as does a strong man in the face of threatening disaster. “Charmian,” he said, “to-morrow I must start back to Mary and Andy and leave you here alone. I’ll get Andy and send him on to you, while I make an effort to take Mary back to Shirttail Henry’s--or at least as far as Mosquito. Then I go on to civilization, while you and Andy wait for me to return to the Valley of Arcana. I’ll probably come back to you in an aeroplane. Only by following that plan can Andy Jerome be saved.” CHAPTER XIX RIDDLES CHARMIAN was gazing across the fire at Shonto, half bewildered at his blunt statement. She had known that Andy was concerned in the disaster that had befallen the party, for long since she had connected the little tablets which he took daily with the loss of the medicine case. “Has Andy told you anything of his physical troubles?” Shonto questioned. “A little,” she replied. “When we were at Jorny Springs with Leach and Morley. He told me about the period in his boyhood that he can’t remember. He told me that it was necessary for him to take his tablets daily. Some kind of heart trouble, isn’t it?” The doctor nodded gravely. “Andy doesn’t hesitate to tell about it,” he said. “I imagined that you knew. Well--” “Pardon me just a moment,” she interrupted. “You haven’t said outright that it is heart trouble, Doctor.” “Have you any reason to think otherwise? “Yes--now. It seems to me that you are still reticent--virtually evasive. You aren’t a practised dissimulator, Doctor. Why do you try it?” “I’ll be frank with you,” he said, “if you’ll be as frank with me. Will you?” “Of course.” “I shall have to ask for your display of frankness first,” he went on. “You must answer this question before I shall feel at liberty to tell you why I have been close-mouthed: In the big cañon that night before you and I left, did Andy ask you to marry him?” Her face went red, but she shook her head. “I believe you,” he said. “But Andy would be too excited to think of asking you to marry him, perhaps. He--both of you--would take marriage for granted. So I must ask another question: Didn’t he tell you that he loves you, and didn’t you surrender yourself to him?” Her long lashes covered her dark eyes, and for a space she declined to answer. Then she lifted her head and looked him straight in the face.