than any other feminine virtue.  Her love for Wickersham but strengthened her resolution, for she believed that, unless he married her, his life would not be safe from her relatives.  Now, after two hours, in which he had used every persuasion, Wickersham, to his unbounded astonishment, found himself facing defeat.  He had not given her credit for so much resolution.  Her answer to all his efforts to overcome her determination was that, unless he married her immediately, she would return home; she would not remain in the hotel a single night.  “I know they will take me back,” she said, weeping.

This was the subject of his conversation, now, with his agent, and he was making up his mind what to do, aided by more or less frequent applications to the decanter which stood between them.

“What she says is true,” declared Plume, his courage stimulated by his liberal potations.  “You won’t be able to go back down there any more.  There are a half-dozen men I know, would consider it their duty to blow your brains out.”

Wickersham filled his glass and tossed off a drink.  “I am not going down there any more, anyhow.”

“I suppose not.  But I don’t believe you would be safe even up here.  There is that devil, Dennison:  he hates you worse than poison.”

“Oh—­up here—­they aren’t going to trouble me up here.”

“I don’t know—­if he ever got a show at you—­Why don’t you let me perform the ceremony?” he began persuasively.  “She knows I’ve been a preacher.  That will satisfy her scruples, and then, if you ever had to make it known—?  But no one would know then.”

Wickersham declined this with a show of virtue.  He did not mention that he had suggested this to the girl but she had positively refused it.  She would be married by a regular preacher or she would go home.

“There must be some one in this big town,” suggested Plume, “who will do such a job privately and keep it quiet?  Where is that preacher you were talking about once that took flyers with you on the quiet?  You can seal his mouth.  And if the worst comes to the worst, there is Montana; you can always get out of it in six weeks with an order of publication. I did it,” said Mr. Plume, quietly, “and never had any trouble about it.”

“You did!  Well, that’s one part of your rascality I didn’t know about.”

“I guess there are a good many of us have little bits of history that we don’t talk about much,” observed Mr. Plume, calmly.  “I wouldn’t have told you now, but I wanted to help you out of the fix that—­”

“That you have helped me get into,” said Wickersham, with a sneer.

“There is no trouble about it,” Plume went on.  “You don’t want to marry anybody else—­now, and meantime it will give you the chance you want of controlling old Rawson’s interest down there.  The old fellow can’t live long, and Phrony is his only heir.  You will have it all your own way.  You can keep it quiet if you wish, and if you don’t, you can acknowledge it and bounce your friend Keith.  If I had your hand I bet I’d know how to play it.”