“My!  He must have been hard-hearted—­your friend.”

“Mebbee.  Well, one fine day he met his mate——­”

“What was she like?”

“Like?  Why, she was the sweetest thing on earth.  I’d as lief try to describe a day such as this——­”

“Oh!  I know what’s coming.  You fell in love with your friend’s sweetheart.  Poor Mr. Wells!”

Jeff ignored this interruption.

“I was saying that my friend met his mate, nobody’s else’s, and though he’d never met her before, by Jing! he knew right off she was his mate.”

“Love at first sight.”

“That’s right.  Love at first sight.”

Sadie’s face and figure perceptibly relaxed.  Her eyes softened delightfully.  With parted lips she seemed to hang upon Jeff’s next words.

“Unfortunately, she was the daughter of a thief.”

“A thief!”

“That ain’t the right word.  Embezzler, I reckon, would fit better.  Leastwise, he’d made away with other folks’ money, meanin’ to put it back, no doubt, if he happened to strike the right lead.  Luck was dead against him.  Mind ye, he was a good citizen enough, as Westerners go.  I don’t deny that he’d average up as well as most.  I remember the case well, because I read about it in the papers.  The dry years had bust him, and the most of his friends too.  Some o’ these friends he’d helped.  He was on their notes of hand, ye understand?”

He glanced at her sharply.  Would she understand?  Would she guess?  No.  In the pure, clear eyes upturned to his he read pity, sympathy interest—­nothing more.  She nodded.

“When times mended in Southern California he thought he saw his chance to get back all he’d lost:  just one o’ those dead sure shots which will miss fire.  He’d not a cent of his own, so he borrowed, without askin’ leave, a few hundreds, that was all, jest a few hundreds from somebody else.”

“He was a—­thief,” said Sadie calmly.

“It’s too hard a word that.  Now then, I’m getting to the point.  My friend, deputy-sheriff like me, found himself in this hell of—­I mean in this terrible tight place.  He was sent to arrest the father of the girl he loved.”

“Oh-h-h!”

This prolonged exclamation sadly puzzled Jeff, whose claim to consideration at the hands of many friends was a guileless transparency of purpose, a candour and simplicity unhappily too rare.  Now, his climax, so artfully introduced, provoked nothing more satisfactory than this “Oh-h-h!”

“Well,” continued Jeff, gazing almost fiercely into Sadie’s eyes, “my friend found the father, and he knew that he could arrest him, or he could earn the everlastin’ gratitude of the girl by letting him escape—­and helping him to escape.”

“And what did your friend do?” Sadie asked quietly.

“What do you think he did, Miss Sadie?”

“Did the girl know that her father was a thief?”

“She was as innocent as Mary’s little lamb.”