of the law there was nothing of the blusterer.  She set him down as a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next.  She enjoyed his low, good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the southwestern outdoors.  Not once had he referred to the affair at the Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question did she ask him concerning it.  He told himself that so utterly human, so perfectly feminine a being as she must be burning with curiosity; she marvelled that he could think, speak of anything else.  When together they rose from the table they were alike prepared, should circumstance so direct, to be friends.

She was going now to call upon the Engles.  She had told him that she had a letter to Mrs. Engle from a common friend in Richmond.

“I don’t want to appear to be riding too hard on your trail,” he smiled at her.  “But I was planning dropping in on the Engles myself this evening.  They’re friends of mine, you know.”

She laughed, and as they left the hotel, propounded a riddle for him to answer:  Should Mr. Norton introduce her to Mrs. Engle so that she might present her letter, or, after the letter was presented, should Mrs. Engle introduce her to Mr. Norton?

It did not suggest itself to her until they had passed from the street, through the cottonwoods and into the splendid living-room of the Engle home, that her escort was not dressed as she had imagined all civilized mankind dressed for a call.  Walking through the primitive town his boots and soft shirt and travel-soiled hat had been in too perfect keeping with the environment for her to be more than pleasurably conscious of them.

At the Engles’, however, his garb struck her for a moment of the first shock of contrast, as almost grotesquely out of place.

At the broad front door Norton had rapped.  The desultory striking of a piano’s keys ceased abruptly, a girl’s voice crying eagerly:  “It’s Roddy!” hinted at the identity of the listless player, a door flung open flooded the broad entrance hall with light.  And then the outer door framed banker Engle’s daughter, a mere girl in her middle teens, fair-haired, fair-skinned, fluffy-skirted, her eyes bright with expectation, her two hands held out offering themselves in doubled greetings.  But, having seen the unexpected guest at the sheriff’s side, the bright-haired girl paused for a brief moment of uncertainty upon the threshold, her hands falling to her sides.

“Hello, Florrie,” Norton was saying quietly.  “I have brought a caller for your mother.  Miss Engle, Miss Page.”

“How do you do, Miss Page?” Florrie replied, regaining her poise and giving one of her hands to each of the callers, the abandon of her first appearance gone in a flash to be replaced by a vague hint of stiffness.  “Mama will be so glad to see you.  Do come in.”