Lester received his sentence in silence. At the moment he was glad of it. He turned on his heel and went to packing with more haste, with greater skill, than he had ever displayed in any enterprise hitherto. His hurry arose from a species of desperation. "If I can only get out of the house!" was his inward cry. "Why pack up?" he suddenly asked himself. "What do they matter--these boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous intentness. She was no longer the laughing, romping girl, but the woman with alert eye and tightly closed lips. "What are you doing, Dell?" "Your father has ordered me to leave the ranch," he answered, "and so I'm going." "No, you're not! I don't care what he has ordered! You're not going"--she came up and put her arms about his neck--"not without me." And, feeling her claim to pity, he took her in his arms and tenderly pressed her cheek upon his bosom. Then she began to weep. "I can't live without you, Dell," she moaned. He drew her closer, a wave of tenderness rising in his heart. "I'll be lonely without you, Fan--but your father is right. I am too poor--we have no home--" "What does that matter?" she asked. "I wouldn't marry you for any amount of _money_! And I know you don't care for this old ranch! _I'll_ be glad to get shut of it. I'll go with you, and we'll make a home somewhere else." Then her mood changed. Her face and voice hardened. She pushed herself away from him. "No, I won't! I'll stay here, and so shall you! Dad can't boss me, and I won't let him run you out. Come and face him up with me." So, leading him, she returned to the kitchen, where Blondell, alone with his wife, was eating supper, his elbows on the table, his hair unkempt, his face glowering, a glooming contrast to his radiant and splendid daughter, who faced him fearlessly. "Dad, what do you mean by talking this way to George Adelbert? He's going to stay and I'm going to stay, and you're going to be decent about it, for I'm going to marry him." "No, you're not!" he blurted out. "Well, I am!" She drew nearer and with her hands on the table looked down into his wind-worn face and dim eyes. "I say you've got to be decent. Do you understand?" Her body was as lithe, as beautiful, as that of a tigress as she leaned thus, and an unalterable resolution blazed in her eyes as she went on, a deeper significance coming into her voice: "Furthermore, I'm as good as married to him right now, and I don't care who knows it." The old man's head lifted with a jerk, and he looked at her with mingled fear and fury. "What do you mean?" "Anything you want to have it mean," she replied. "You drive him out and you drive me out--that's what I mean."