“Oh, I left it on the floor in Tweezy’s house when I found I didn’t need it any longer.”

“Thank God!” breathed Racey, whose hair had begun to rise at the bare idea of the explosives still being somewhere on her person.  “What was yore motive in hold in’ up Jack Harpe and Jakey Pooley?”

“Was that who they were?  I couldn’t see their faces.  Well, when I had broken the lock and opened the back window and crawled through, I went into the front room where I thought likely the safe would be, and I was just going to strike a match when I heard a snap at the front window as the lock broke.  Maybe I wasn’t good and scared.  I paddled into the other front room by mistake.  Got turned around in the dark, I suppose.  And before I could open a window and get out I heard two men in the front room I’d just left.  I didn’t dare open a window then.  They’d have heard me surely, so I just knelt down behind a bed.  And after a while, when one man was busy at the safe, the fat man came into my room and sat down on a chair inside the door.  Lordy, I hardly dared breathe.  It’s a wonder my hair didn’t turn white.  Once I thought they must have heard me—­the time the fat man said ‘rats’.  Honestly, I was so scared I was almost sick.”

“But you have nerve enough to try and hold them up.”

“I had to.  When I found out they were going to rob the safe, I had to do something.  Why, they might have taken the very paper I wanted, and somehow later Tweezy might have gotten it back.  I couldn’t allow that.  I knew that I must get at what was inside the safe before they did.  I just had to, so when the fat man got up from his chair and stood in the doorway with his back to me, I just gritted my teeth and stood up and said ‘Hands up.’”

“My Gawd, girl, you might ‘a’ been shot!”

“I had a sixshooter,” she said, tranquilly.  “But I wouldn’t have shot first,” she added, reflectively.

Willy-nilly then he took her in his arms and held her tightly.

“But I don’t see why,” he said after an interval, “you had to go off on a wild-goose chase thisaway.  Didn’t I tell you I was going to fix it up for you?  Couldn’t you ‘a’ trusted me enough to lemme do it my own way?”

“We had that—­that quarrel in the kitchen, and I thought you didn’t like me any more, and—­and wouldn’t have any more to do with me and that it was my job to do something to help out the family....  Please!  Racey!  I can’t breathe!”

Another interval, and she resolutely pushed his arms down and held him away from her with both hands on his shoulders.

“Tell me,” said she, her blue eyes plumbing the very depths of his soul, “tell me you don’t love anybody else.”

He told her.

Later.  “There was a time once when I thought you liked Luke Tweezy,” he observed, lazily.

“How horrible,” she murmured with a slight shudder as she snuggled closer.

And that was that.