“If I’d only known,” he began lamely.

“You never suspected?”

A note of anxiety escaped Jeff’s ears.

“N-n-no.  Of course not.  Why, think how I handled you.”

Sadie blushed.

“I’ll forget everything,” she whispered, showing a couple of dimples, “and we’ll begin all over again, Mr.—­Wells.”

His confusion, which she attributed to bashfulness, encouraged the shameless coquette to add:  “Maybe you liked me better as Bud?” Jeff was scarlet as he replied:  “I liked Bud first-rate, but Bud’ll remember what I said about his sister.”  Then he quite spoiled the effect of this happy phrase by adding hurriedly:  “Say, I’d just as lief you didn’t tell your father that I am a deputy-sheriff.”

Sadie raised her dark brows.

“I thought you were so proud of that.”

“I tooted my own horn, like a tenderfoot.”

“But I liked what you said, Mr. Wells.  That’s the part I shan’t forget.  About doing your duty, you know.  Dad would like that too.  He’s done his duty, has Dad—­always.”

“I’ll allow he’s done his duty by you.”

She laughed gaily; then, seeing with a woman’s quick eyes that the man was in pain, she said for the second time, “I know you’re feeling worse, Mr. Wells.”

A wiser than Jeff would have assented to this.  Jeff rose hastily and walked a few paces.

“I’m most well,” he declared irritably.

“Then what ails you?”

Jeff sat down again, smiling nervously.

“Well, Miss Sadie, I was thinking of the cruellest thing in this cruel world.”

“My!  What’s that?”

“Why do the innocent suffer for the sins o’ the guilty?”

“You do fly the track.”  She paused, gazing first at Jeff’s troubled face, and then at the scene about them.  The enchantress, Spring, had touched all things with her magical fingers The time had come when

      “Half of the world a bridegroom is,
       And half of the world a bride.”

Very soon—­within a month at most—­the creek which ran so joyfully to the great ocean yonder would have run altogether out of sight, leaving a parched and desolate watercourse in its place.  The grass, now a vivid green, bespangled with brilliant poppies, would fade into premature age and ugliness.  The trees would have assumed the dust-covered livery of summer.  The birds would be mute.

Sadie shrugged, protestingly, her slender shoulders.

“Suppose we talk of something else this lovely day?”

But Jeff paid no attention.  In a crude, boyish fashion he had come to a decision.

“Shall I tell you a story?”

“Oh, please!”

“It happened to a friend of mine, a man I knew real well.”

“A love story, Mr. Wells?”

“There’s love in it, Miss Sadie.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“This man, my friend, he was a brother deputy o’ mine, came to be twenty-six without ever falling in love.”