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Romer's enjoyment of this story-telling hour around the glowing camp-fire was equalled by his reluctance to go to bed. "Aw, Dad, please let me hear one more," he pleaded. His shining eyes would have weakened a sterner discipline than mine. And Haught seemed inspired by them. "Wal now, listen to this hyar," he began again, with a twinkle in his eye.

Down sailed the squirrel to hit with a plump. That was Romer's first successful hunting experience. How proud he was of that gray squirrel! I suffered a pang to see the boy so radiant, so full of fire at the killing of a beautiful creature of the woods. Then again I remembered my own first sensations. Boys are blood-thirsty little savages.

"I am bringing you ladies a friend to lunch," says Maurice, gaily, and Mrs. Romer's face clears when she sees that it is Beatrice Miller. "Oh, Beatrice, it is you! I am delighted to see you! Go in to the dining-room, you will find Lady Kynaston. Maurice," drawing him back a minute, "how late you are again! What have you been doing?" "I waited whilst Miss Miller put her bonnet on."

Romer's last remark thoroughly. "No, I dare say I don't know much about women's ways," he admitted; "and you think " "I think that Vera would be glad enough to be married as soon as she can. An engagement is a trying ordeal. One is glad enough to get settled down. What is the use of waiting when once everything is arranged?" Sir John flushed a little.

Also he told a story of Apaches being driven into the highest cave from which they had never escaped. This tale was manifestly to Romer's liking and I had to use force to keep him from risking his neck. A very strong breeze blew under the arch. When we rolled a boulder into the large, dark pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom, boom, growing hollower the deeper it went.

With breezy fatherliness which inspirited Una, he spoke of the possible presence of pneumococcus, of doing magic things with Romer's serum, of trusting in God, of the rain, of cold baths and digitalin. He patted Una's head and cheerily promised to return at dawn. He yawned and smiled at himself.

With his own lips he had told her that he could not marry her. There had been mention, indeed, of that problematical term of five years, in which he had bound himself to await Mrs. Romer's pleasure but, even had Mrs. Romer not existed, it was plain that Maurice was the last man in the world to take advantage of a woman's weakness in order to supplant his brother in her heart.

He had practiced a good deal, and was a fairly good shot for a youngster, but hitting a little gray ball of fur high on a tree, or waving at the tip of a branch, was no easy matter. "Son," I said, "you don't take after your Dad." And his uncle tried the lad's temper by teasing him about Wetzel. Now Wetzel, the great Indian killer of frontier days, was Romer's favorite hero.

This remark proved that he had paid me a compliment in eastern slang most likely assimilated from R.C. and Romer. The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and next morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh, spirited, and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because of some surreptitious trick of Romer's. But by noon we had all the outfit packed in the wagon.

We none of us spoke, and I presume that Hastings' and Romer's thoughts were the same as my own, which were, that I would have given a great deal to find myself safe and sound again within the prison walls.