“What you doin’ here, Gawge Washington?  Ain’t I done tole you sebenty times seben to keep outa my kitchen at dis time o’ day?”

“I wanter see Miss Phyl.”

“Then I low you kin take it out in wantin’.  Think she got time to fool away on a nigger sprout like you-all?  Light a shuck back to the stable, where you belong.”

’Rastus grinned amiably, flung himself at a door, and vanished into that part of the house which was forbidden territory to him, the while Becky stared after him in amazement.

“What in tarnation got in dat nigger child?” she gasped.

Phyllis, having arranged the mail and delivered most of it, had left the store in charge of the clerk and retired to her private den, a cool room finished in restful tints at the northeast corner of the house.  She was sitting by a window reading a magazine, when there came a knock.  Her “Come in” disclosed ’Rastus and the whites of his rolling eyes.

She nodded and smiled.  “What can I do for you, George Washington Abraham Lincoln Randolph?”

“I done come to tell you somepin I heerd whilst I was asleep in de live oak at the corral.”

“Something you dreamed.  It is very good of you, George Wash——­”

“Now, don’t you call me all dat again, Miss Phyl.  And I didn’t dream it nerrer.  I woke up and heerd it.  Mr. Jim Yeager and dat nester they call Keller wuz a-talkin’, and Mr. Jim he allowed dat Keller wuz a rustler, and den Keller he allowed dat Mr. Phil wuz de rustler.”

“What!” The girl had sprung to her feet, amazed, her dark eyes blazing indignation.

“Tha’s what he said.  He went on to tell how he done found a knife by the dead cow, an’ ‘twuz yore knife, an’ you done loan it to Mr. Phil.”

“He said that!” She was a creature transformed by passion.  The hot blood of Southern ancestors raced through her veins clamorously.  She wanted to strike down this man, to annihilate him and the cowardly lie he had given to shield himself.  And pat to her need came the very person she could best use for her instrument.

Healy stood surprised in the doorway, confronted by the slender young amazon.  The storm of passion in the eyes, the underlying flush in the dusky cheeks, indicated a new mood in his experience of this young woman of many moods.

“Come in and shut the door,” she ordered.  Then, “Tell him, ’Rastus.”

The boy, all smiles gone now, repeated his story, and was excused.

“What do you think of that, Brill?” the girl demanded, after the door had closed on him.

The stockman’s eyes had grown hard.  “I think Keller’s covering his own tracks.  Of course we’ve got no direct proof, but——­”

“We have,” she broke in.

“I can’t see it.  According to Jim Yeager——­”

“Jim lied.  I asked him to.”

“You—­what?”

“I asked him to say that this man had come there to work for him.  Jim was not to blame.”