“What are you doing here?” They were the first words spoken by the man on the lounge and they rang with a curt challenge. “Come to inquire after the health of my dear cousin,” came the prompt silken answer. “You villain!” “My dear cousin, y’u speak with such conviction that y’u almost persuade me. But of course if I’m a villain I’ve got to live up to my reputation. Haven’t I, Miss Messiter?” “Wouldn’t it be better to live it down?” she asked with a quietness that belied her terror. For there had been in his manner a threat, not against her but against the man whom her heart acknowledged as her lover. He laughed. “Y’u’re still hoping to make a Sunday school superintendent out of me, I see. Y’u haven’t forgot all your schoolmarm ways yet, but I’ll teach y’u to forget them.” The other cousin watched him with a cool, quiet glance that never wavered. The outlaw was heavily armed, but his weapons were sheathed, and, though there was a wary glitter behind the vindictive exultation in his eyes, his capable hands betrayed no knowledge of the existence of his revolvers. It was, he knew, to be a moral victory, if one at all. “Hope I’m not disturbing any happy family circle,” he remarked, and, taking two limping steps forward, he lifted the book from the girl’s unresisting hands. “H’m! Barrie. I don’t go much on him. He’s too sissy for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would be reading something like that,” he concluded, a flicker of sneering contempt crossing his face. “Perhaps y’u’ll learn some time to attend to your own business,” said the man on the couch quietly. Hatred gleamed in the narrowed slits from which the soul of the other cousin looked down at him. “I’m a philanthropist, and my business is attending to other people’s. They raise sheep, for instance, and I market them.” The girl hastily interrupted. She had not feared for herself, but she knew fear for the indomitable man she had nursed back to life. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Bannister? Since you don’t approve our literature, perhaps we can find some other diversion more to your taste.” She smiled faintly. The man turned in smiling divination of her purpose, and sat down to play with her as a cat does with a mouse. “Thank y’u, Miss Messiter, I believe I will. I called to thank y’u for your kindness to my cousin as well as to inquire about you. The word goes that y’u pulled my dear cousin back when death was reaching mighty strong for him. Of course I feel grateful to y’u. How is he getting along now?” “He’s doing very well, I think.” “That’s ce’tainly good hearing,” was his ironical response. “How come he to get hurt, did y’u say?” His sleek smile was a thing hateful to see. “A hound bit me,” explained the sheepman. “Y’u don’t say! I reckon y’u oughtn’t to have got in its way. Did y’u kill it?” “Not yet.” “That was surely a mistake, for it’s liable to bite again.”