“Yes, dad.”

“Why?  Do you like him so much?”

“I like him—­of course.  He has been almost a brother to me.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, are you sure you don’t like him more’n you ought—­considerin’ what’s in the wind?”

“Yes, I’m sure I don’t,” replied Columbine, with tingling cheeks.

“Wal, I’m glad of thet.  Reckon it’ll be no great matter whether Wils stays or leaves.  If he wants to I’ll give him a job with the hounds.”

That evening Columbine went to her room early.  It was a cozy little blanketed nest which she had arranged and furnished herself.  There was a little square window cut through the logs and through which many a night the snow had blown in upon her bed.  She loved her little isolated refuge.  This night it was cold, the first time this autumn, and the lighted lamp, though brightening the room, did not make it appreciably warmer.  There was a stone fireplace, but as she had neglected to bring in wood she could not start a fire.  So she undressed, blew out the lamp, and went to bed.  Columbine was soon warm, and the darkness of her little room seemed good to her.  Sleep she felt never would come that night.  She wanted to think; she could not help but think; and she tried to halt the whirl of her mind.  Wilson Moore occupied the foremost place in her varying thoughts—­a fact quite remarkable and unaccountable.  She tried to change it.  In vain!  Wilson persisted—­on his white mustang flying across the ridge-top—­coming to her as never before—­with his anger and disapproval—­his strange, poignant cry, “Columbine!” that haunted her—­with his bitter smile and his resignation and his mocking talk of jealousy.  He persisted and grew with the old rancher’s frank praise.

“I must not think of him,” she whispered.  “Why, I’ll be—­be married soon....  Married!”

That word transformed her thought, and where she had thrilled she now felt cold.  She revolved the fact in mind.

“It’s true, I’ll be married, because I ought—­I must,” she said, half aloud.  “Because I can’t help myself.  I ought to want to—­for dad’s sake....  But I don’t—­I don’t.”

She longed above all things to be good, loyal, loving, helpful, to show her gratitude for the home and the affection that had been bestowed upon a nameless waif.  Bill Belllounds had not been under any obligation to succor a strange, lost child.  He had done it because he was big, noble.  Many splendid deeds had been laid at the old rancher’s door.  She was not of an ungrateful nature.  She meant to pay.  But the significance of the price began to dawn upon her.

“It will change my whole life,” she whispered, aghast.

But how?  Columbine pondered.  She must go over the details of that change.  No mother had ever taught her.  The few women that had been in the Belllounds home from time to time had not been sympathetic or had not stayed long enough to help her much.  Even her school life in Denver had left her still a child as regarded the serious problems of women.