“Yes; and just imagine the effect on our constable of telling him that the fate of an empire lay in his hands.  It’s hard enough to get a man arrested who beats his horse.  But you must go back to your keepers.  You haven’t your hat—­”

“Neither have you; you shan’t outdo me in recklessness.  I inspected your hat as I came through the pergola.  I liked it immensely; I came near seizing it as spoil of war,—­the loot of the pergola!”

“There would be cause for another war; I have rarely liked any hat so much.  But the Baron will be after you in a moment.  I can’t be responsible for you.”

“The Baron annoys me.  He has given me a lot of worry.  And that’s what I have come to ask you about.”

“Then I should say that you oughtn’t to quarrel with a dear old man like Baron von Marhof.  Besides, he’s your uncle.”

“No!  No!  I don’t want him to be my uncle!  I don’t need any uncle!”

He glanced about with an anxiety that made her laugh.

“I understand perfectly!  My father told me that the events of April in these hills were not to be mentioned.  But don’t worry; the sheep won’t tell—­and I won’t.”

He was silent for a moment as he thought out the words of what he wished to say to her.  The sun was dipping down into the hills; the mellow air was still; the voice of a negro singing as he crossed a distant field stole sweetly upon them.

“Shirley!”

He touched her hand.

“Shirley!” and his fingers closed upon hers.

“I love you, Shirley!  From those days when I saw you in Paris,—­before the great Gettysburg battle picture, I loved you.  You had felt the cry of the Old World, the story that is in its battle-fields, its beauty and romance, just as I had felt the call of this new and more wonderful world.  I understood—­I knew what was in your heart; I knew what those things meant to you;—­but I had put them aside; I had chosen another life for myself.  And the poor life that you saved, that is yours if you will take it.  I have told your father and Baron von Marhof that I would not take the fortune my father left me; I would not go back there to be thanked or to get a ribbon to wear in my coat.  But my name, the name I bore as a boy and disgraced in my father’s eyes,—­his name that he made famous throughout the world, the name I cast aside with my youth, the name I flung away in anger,—­they wish me to take that.”

She withdrew her hand and rose and looked away toward the western hills.

“The greatest romance in the world is here, Shirley.  I have dreamed it all over,—­in the Canadian woods, on the Montana ranch as I watched the herd at night.  My father spent his life keeping a king upon his throne; but I believe there are higher things and finer things than steadying a shaking throne or being a king.  And the name that has meant nothing to me except dominion and power,—­it can serve no purpose for me to take it now.  I learned