"No!" she cried, remembering. "No! Drive on!" "You bet your sweet life I'll drive on!" the driver burst out. And to Standing: "Stand aside." Then Standing put his hands out suddenly, dropping his rifle in the road, and caught Lynette to him, lifting her out of her seat despite her efforts to cling to the stage, and took up his rifle again, saying sternly to the stage-driver: "Now drive on!" "No!" screamed Lynette, struggling against the one hand restraining her ... and against herself! "He can't do this ... don't let him...." But in the end she knew how it would be. The stage-driver was no man to stand out against Bruce Standing ... she wondered if anywhere on earth there lived a man to gainsay him when that light was in his eyes and that tone vibrated in his voice. "He's got the drop on me ... he'd drop me dead soon as not.... I'll go, Miss; but I'll send back word...." And Lynette and Bruce Standing, in the gathering dusk, were alone again in the quiet lands at the bases of the mountains. "Girl ... I did not know how I loved you until to-day!" She whipped away from him, her eyes scornful. "Love! You talk of love! And you leave me in the hands of those men while you go looking for gold!" "No," he said, "it wasn't that. I thought that you had no further use for me; that you loved Deveril; that you had gone back to him; that you were trying to lead him and the rest to Joe's gold; that...." There was now no sign of weariness in a pair of gray eyes which flashed in hot anger. "What right had you to think that of me?" she challenged him. "That I was a liar, breaking a promise I had made; and worse than a liar, to betray a confidence? What right have you to think a thing like that, Bruce Standing ... and talk to me of love!" He could have told her; he could have quoted to her that message which had been left behind, signed with her name. But, after all, in the end he had Babe Deveril to think of, a man who had shown himself a man, who had done his part for love of her, whose one reward if Bruce Standing himself were a man, must lie in the meagre consolation that Lynette held him above so petty an act as that one which he had committed. So for a moment Standing was silent; and then he could only say earnestly: "I am sorry, Lynette. I wronged you and I was a fool and worse. But there were reasons why I thought that.... And after all we have misunderstood each other; that is all. Joe's gold is still Joe's gold; I have made it safe for him and not one cent of it is mine or will ever be mine...." "Nor do I believe that!" she cried. "Nor any other thing you may ever tell me!" "That, at least, I can make you believe." He was very stern-faced now and began wondering if Deveril had been mad when he had told him that Lynette loved him. How could Deveril know that? There was little enough of the light of love in her eyes now. And yet....