Then he turned and very deliberately reached over and seized Harry Travis, who stood on the rock, nearly on a line with the pommel of the saddle. But the hand that gripped the back of Harry's neck was anything but gentle. It closed around the neck at the base of the brain, burying its fingers in the back muscles with paralyzing pain and jerked him face downward across the saddle with a motion so swift that he was there before he knew it. Then another hand seized him and rammed his mouth, as he lay across the pommel of the saddle, into the sweaty shoulders below the horse's withers, and he felt the horse move out and into the road and up to the crossing of the ways just as a buggy and two fast bay mares came around the corner. The driver of the bays stopped as he saw his cousin thrown like a pig over the pommel and held there kicking and cursing. "I was looking for him," said Richard Travis quietly, "but I would like to know what it all means." The big glasses shone in kindly humor. They did not reflect any excitement in the eyes behind them. "I am afraid it means that he is drunk. Perhaps he will tell you about it. Quite unusual, I must say--he seemed to be trying to drown a young lady in a spring." He eased his burden over the saddle and dropped him into the road. Richard Travis took it in instantly, and as Clay rode away he heard the cousin say: "You damned yellow cur--to bear the name of Travis." CHAPTER III WORK IN A NEW LIGHT It was an hour before Clay Westmore rode back to Millwood. He had been too busy plowing that day to get, sooner, a specimen of the rock he had seen out-cropping on Sand Mountain. At night, after supper, he had ridden over for it. And now by moonlight he had found it! He flushed with the strength of it all as he put it in his satchel--the strength of knowing that not even poverty, nor work, nor night could keep him from accomplishing his purpose. Then he rode back, stopping at Millwood. For he thought, too, that he might see Helen, and while he had resolved not to force himself on her after what she had said when he last saw her, still he wished very much to see her now and then. For somehow, it never got out of his deductive head that some day she would learn to love him. Had he known the temptation, the despair that was hers, he would not have been so quietly deliberate. But she had never told him. In fact, he had loved her from a distance all his life in his quiet way, though now, by her decree, they were scarcely more than the best of friends. Some day, after he had earned enough, he would tell her just how much he loved her. At present he could not, for was he not too poor, and were not his mother and sister dependent upon him?