“Right fine,” he told her, settling himself comfortably in the chair she had indicated.  “But a feller gets tired of one place after a while.  I thought maybe I’d come back to the Lazy River and get a job ridin’ the range again.”

“Aren’t there any ranches round the Bend?” she asked, poking up the fire and setting on the coffee-pot.

“Plenty, but I—­I like the Lazy River country,” he told her.  “Fort Creek country for yores truly, now and hereafter.”

In this fashion did the proposed journey to Arizona go glimmering.  His eye lingered on the banjo where it lay on the table.

“Can you play it?” she asked, her eye following his.

“Some,” said he.  “Want to hear a camp-meeting song?”

She nodded.  He rose and picked up the banjo.  He placed a foot on the chair seat, slid the banjo to rest on his thigh, swept the strings, and broke into “Inchin’ Along”.  Which ditty made her laugh.  For it is a funny song, and he sang it well.

“That was fine,” she told him when he had sung it through.  “Your voice sounds a lot like that of a man I heard singing in Farewell yesterday.  He was in the Happy Heart when I was going by, and he sang Jog on, jog on the footpath way.  If it hadn’t been a saloon I’d have gone in.  I just love the old songs.”

“You do?” said he, delightedly, with shining eyes.  “Well, Miss Dale, that feller in the saloon was me, and old songs is where I live.  I cut my teeth on ‘The Barley Mow’ and grew up with ‘Barbara Allen’.  My mother she used to sing ’em all.  She was a great hand to sing and she taught me.  Know ‘The Keel Row?’”

She didn’t, so he sang it for her.  And others he sang, too—­“The Merry Cuckoo” and “The Bailiff’s Daughter”.  The last she liked so well that he sang it three times over, and they quite forgot the coffee.

Racey Dawson was starting the second verse of “Sourwood Mountain” when someone without coughed apologetically.  Racey stopped singing and looked toward the doorway.  Standing in the sunken half-round log that served as a doorstep was the stranger he had seen with Lanpher.

There was more than a hint of amusement in the black eyes with which the stranger was regarding Racey.  The latter felt that the stranger was enjoying a hearty internal laugh at his expense.  As probably he was.  Racey looked at him from beneath level brows.  The lid of the stranger’s right eye dropped ever so little.  It was the merest of winks.  Yet it was unmistakable.  It recalled their morning’s meeting.  More, it was the tolerant wink of a superior to an inferior.  A wink that merited a kick?  Quite so.

The keen black eyes veered from Racey to the girl.  The man removed his hat and bowed with, it must be said, not a little grace.  Miss Dale nodded coldly.  The stranger smiled.  It was marvellous how the magic of that smile augmented the attractive good looks of the stranger’s full face.  It was equally singular how that self-same smile rendered more hawk-like than ever the hard and Roman profile of the fellow.  It was precisely as though he were two different men at one and the same time.