“Look here, Upham, you know nothing of Wilkins, and I advise you and—­ er—­Miss Hetty to go slow.”

“I do go slow,” said my host, “but Hetty likes to buzz along.  She’s a mover, she is.”

As we rode home I told Ajax that Opportunity had thrust into Wilkins’ hand a very tempting morsel.  Was he going to swallow it?  And ought we to ask some questions?

I think it was on the following Wednesday that Wilkins walked over to the ranch-house, and asked for a job.

“I’ve left Upham,” he said curtly.

We had not much to offer; such as it was, Wilkins accepted it.  Ajax drove to Upham’s to fetch Wilkins’ blankets and belongings.  When he came back, he drew me aside.

“Silas offered him the billet of foreman.  Wilkins refused it.”

* * * * *

A month passed.  Wilkins worked hard at first, and his ability, his shrewdness, confounded us, as it had confounded Silas Upham.  Then, he began to slack, as boys put it.  Small duties were ill done or not done at all.  But we liked him, were, indeed, charmed by him.  As Ajax remarked, Fascination does not trot in the same class with Respect.

Twice I caught that shameless little witch, Hetty, in our back pasture, where Wilkins was splitting rails.  Thrice a week she called at the ranch-house on her way to the post office.

“She means to marry Wilkins,” said Ajax to me.  “And why not?  If one woman has made him—­er—­invertebrate, let Hetty Upham put backbone into him.”

That evening we asked Wilkins to witness a legal paper, some agreement or other.  He signed his name Henry Wilkins.  Ajax stared at me; then he walked to the bookcase.  His voice was very hard, as he turned, Harrow register in hand, and said:  “The only Wilkins at Tommy’s was Theodore Vane Wilkins.”

Wilkins rose, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.  Ajax scowled.

“We told Silas Upham that you were an old Harrovian,” began my brother.

“So I am; but my name is not Wilkins.”  He lit a cigarette, before he continued quietly:  “I’m a fraud.  I’m not even an Englishman.  My father was a Southerner.  He settled in England after the war.  He used to say bitterly that he had been born the wrong side of the Atlantic.  He died soon after I left Harrow.  With what money he left me I travelled all over the world:  shooting, fishing, and playing the fool.

“When I found myself stony-broke, I hunted up my Baltimore relations.  Some of them told me it was easier to marry money than to make it.  My name—­I’ll keep that to myself, if you don’t mind—­had a certain value in the eyes of a rich girl I knew.  At the same time there was another girl——­”

“Ah—­Dinah,” Ajax murmured.