“May I speak to you a moment privately?”

Bostwick bristled with suspicions at once.

“I have nothing of a private nature to discuss with you,” he answered.  “If you have anything to say to me, please say it and be prompt.”

The horseman changed color, but lost no whit of the native courtesy that seemed a part of his being.

“It isn’t particularly private,” he answered quietly.  “I only wished to say I wouldn’t rush off to Goldite this morning.  I’d advise you to stay here and rest.”

Bostwick, already irritated by delay, and impervious to any thought of a possible service in the horseman’s attitude, grew more impatient and far more irritating.

“I haven’t desired your advice,” he answered sharply.  “Be good enough to keep it to yourself.”  He advanced to the station owner, held out a bill, and added:  “Here you are, my man, for your trouble.”

“Heck!” said the lank little host.  “I don’t want your money.”

Across the horseman’s handsome visage passed a look that, to the girl, boded anything but peace.  Bostwick’s manner was an almost intolerable affront, in a land where affronts are resented.  However, the stranger answered quietly, despite the fact that Bostwick nettled him to an extraordinary degree.

“I agree that the sooner you vamoose, the prompter the improvement in the landscape.  But you’re not going off to Goldite with these ladies in the car.”

Matters might still have culminated differently had Bostwick even asked a civil “Why?” for Van was a generous and easy-going being.

Beth, in the road, felt her heart beat violently, with vague excitement and alarm.  Bostwick glared, in sudden apprehension as to what the horseman had in mind.

“Is this a hold-up?” he demanded.  “What do you mean?”

The rider dismounted, in a quick, active manner, and opened the door of the tonneau.

“You wouldn’t have thanked me for advice,” he replied; “you would hardly thank me more for information.”  He added to the maid in the car: 

“Please alight, your friend is impatient to be starting.”  He nodded towards the owner of the auto.

The maid came down, demurely, casting but a glance at the tall, commanding figure by the wheel.  He promptly lifted out a suitcase and three decidedly feminine-looking bags.

Bostwick by now was furious.

“It’s an outrage!” he cried, “a dastardly outrage!  You can see I am wholly unarmed!  Do you mean to restrain these ladies here by force?”

The horseman slipped his arm through the reins of his pony’s bridle, surveying Bostwick calmly.

“Do you mean to desert them if I do?  I have not yet ordered you to leave.”

“Ordered me to leave!” echoed the car owner fiercely.  “I can neither be ordered to leave nor to stay!  But I shall go—­do you hear?—­I shall go—­and the ladies with me!  If you mean to rob us, do so at once and have it over!  My time is precious, if yours is not!”