It was his old, stereotyped, brazen way, but she did not know it and blushed prettily. "You are kind, Mr. Travis, but--but that mustn't be thought of. Please, but I wish you wouldn't talk that way." "Why, it is true, my queen--of The Gaffs?" he said smiling. She began to work again. He came over to her and bent low: "You know I am to take you Monday night"-- Her hands flew very rapidly--her cheeks mantled into a rich glow. One of the threads snapped. She stopped, confused. Travis glanced around. No one was near. He bent and kissed her hair: "My queen," he whispered, "my beautiful queen." Then he walked quickly out. He went to his office, but he still saw the beautiful picture. It thrilled him and then there swept up over him another picture, and he cried savagely to himself: "I'll make her sorry. She shall bow to that fine thing yet--my queen." Nor would it leave him that day, and into the night he dreamed of her, and it was the same Titian picture in a background of red sunset. And her machine was a harp she was playing. He wakened and smiled: "Am I falling in love with that girl? That will spoil it all." He watched her closely the next day, for it puzzled him to know why she had changed so rapidly in her manner toward him. He had ridden to Millwood to bring her to the mill, himself; and he had some exquisite roses for her--clipped in the hot-house by his own hands. It was with an unmistakable twitch of jealousy that he learned that Clay Westmore had already come by and gone with her. "I know what it is now," he said to Jud Carpenter at the mill that morning; "she is half in love with that slow, studious fellow." Jud laughed: "Say, excuse me, sah--but hanged if you ain't got all the symptoms, y'self, boss?" Travis flushed: "Oh, when I start out to do a thing I want to do it--and I'm going to take her with me, or die trying." Jud laughed again: "Leave it to me--I'll fix the goggle-eyed fellow." That night when the door bell rang at Westmoreland, Jud Carpenter was ushered into Clay's workshop. He sat down and looked through his shaggy eyebrows at the lint and dust and specimens of ore. Then he spat on the floor disgustedly. "Sorry to disturb you, but be you a surveyor also?" The big bowed glasses looked at him quietly and nodded affirmatively. "Wal, then," went on Jud, "I come to git you to do a job of surveying for the mill. It's a lot of timber land on the other side of the mountain--some twenty miles off. The Company's bought five thousand acres of wood and they want it surveyed. What'll you charge?" Clay thought a moment: "Going and coming, on horse-back--it will take me a week," said Clay thoughtfully. "I shall charge a hundred dollars." "An' will you go right away--to-morrow mornin'?" Clay nodded. "Here's fifty of it," said Jud--"the Company is in a hurry. We want the survey by this day week. Let me see, this is Sat'dy--I'll come next Sat'dy night."