Sanderson had slumped down in his chair.  He saw discovery and disgrace in prospect.  In the total stoppage of his thoughts no way of escape or evasion suggested itself.  At the outset he was to be exposed as a miserable impostor.

He groaned, grinned vacuously at Mary, and again produced the handkerchief, wiping away drops of perspiration that were twice as big as those he had previously mopped off.

Mary continued to stare at him, repeating the question:  “How did you get it?”

Sanderson’s composure began to return; his grin grew wider and more intelligent, and at the sixth repetition of Mary’s question he answered, boldly: 

“I wasn’t goin’ to tell you about that.  You see, ma’am——­”

“Mary!”

“You see, Mary, I was goin’ to fool Brans—­dad.  I wrote, askin’ him for the job, an’ I was intendin’ to come on, to surprise him.  But before I told him who I was, I was goin’ to feel him out, an’ find out what he thought of me.  Then I got your letter, tellin’ me he was dead, an’ so there wasn’t any more use of tryin’ to fool him.”

“But that name, ‘Sanderson?’ That isn’t your name, Will!”

“It was,” he grinned.  “When I left home I didn’t want anybody to be runnin’ into me an’ recognizin’ me, so I changed it to Sanderson.  Deal Sanderson.”

The girl’s expression changed to delight; she sat erect and clapped her hands.

“Oh,” she said, “I wish father was here to listen to this!  He thought all along that you were going to turn out bad.  If he only knew!  Will, you don’t mean to tell me that you are the Sanderson that we all know of here—­that nearly everybody in the country has heard about; the man who is called ‘Square Deal’ Sanderson by all his friends—­and even by his enemies—­because of his determination to do right—­and to make everyone else do right too!”

Again Sanderson resorted to the handkerchief.

“I don’t reckon they’ve talked about me that strong,” he said.

“But they have!  Oh, I’m so happy, Will.  Why, when Dale hears about it he’ll be positively venomous—­and scared.  I don’t think he will bother the Double A again—­after he hears of it!”

But Sanderson merely smirked mirthlessly; he saw no reason for being joyful over the lie he had told.  He was getting deeper and deeper into the mire of deceit and prevarication, and there seemed to be no escape.

And now, when he had committed himself, he realized that he might have evaded it all, this last lie at least, by telling Mary that he had picked the note up on the desert, or anywhere, for that matter, and she would have been forced to believe him.

He kept her away from him, fending off her caresses with a pretense of slight indisposition until suddenly panic-stricken over insistence, he told her he was going to bed, bolted into the room, locked the door behind him, and sat long in the darkness and the heat, filling the room with a profane appreciation of himself as a double-dyed fool who could not even lie intelligently.