“Why—­Mr. Van!” she stammered, flushing rosily.  “I heard you were in town.”

He came towards her quietly enough, the jeweler’s box in his hand.

“I called before,” he answered in his off-hand way.  “You must have been out with poor old Searle.”

“Oh,” she said, “poor old Searle?  Why poor?”

“I told you why before,” he said boldly, in spite of himself.  He was standing before her by the table, looking fairly into her eyes, with that dancing boyishness amazingly bright in his own.  “You remember, too—­you can’t forget.”

The flush in her cheeks increased.  Her glance was lowered.

“You didn’t give me time to—­rebuke you for that,” she answered, attempting to assume a tone of severity.  “You had no right—­it wasn’t nice or like you in the least.”

“Yes it was, nice, and like me,” he corrected.  “I’ve brought you a nugget from the claim.”  He opened the box and shook out the pin on the table.

She had started to make a reply concerning his actions when leaving on that former occasion.  The words were pushed aside.

“Oh, my!” she said in a little exclamation, instead.  “A nugget!—­gold!—­not from the—­not from your claim?”

His hand slightly trembled.

“From the ‘Laughing Water’ claim.  Named for the girl I’m going to marry.”

She gasped, almost audibly.  The things he said were so wholly unexpected—­so almost naked in their bluntness.

“The girl—­some girl you—­Isn’t it beautiful?” she faltered helplessly.  “Of course I don’t know—­how any girl could have such a singular name.”

“Yes you do,” he corrected in his shockingly candid way.  “You know when Dave gave her the name.”

“Do I?” she asked weakly, trying to smile, and feeling some wonderful, welcome sort of fear of the passion with which he fairly glowed.  “You are—­very positive.”

He moved a trifle closer, touching the pin, with a finger, as she held it in her hand.  His voice slightly shook as he asked: 

“Do you like it?”

“The pin?  Of course.  A genuine nugget!  You were very kind, I’m sure.”

“I thought when you and I ride over to the claim, some day, you ought to have a horse of your own,” he announced in his manner of finality.  “So your horse and outfit are over at Charlie’s, at your order.”

She looked up at him swiftly.  “My horse—­over at Charlie’s?”

“Yes, Charlie’s—­the hay-yard.  I thought you liked a side-saddle best and I found a good one in the hay.”

“But—­I haven’t any horse,” she protested, failing for a moment to grasp his meaning.  “How could I have a horse in Goldite?”

“You couldn’t help having him—­that’s all—­any more than you can help having me.”

The light in his eyes was far too magnetic for her own brown glance to escape.  She hardly knew what she was saying, or what she was thinking.  She was simply aflame with happiness in his presence—­and she feared he must read it in her glance.  That the horse was his gift she comprehended all at once—­but—­what had he said—­what was it he had said, that she must answer?  Her heart and her mind had coalesced.  There was love in both and little of reason in either.  She knew he was holding her eyes to his with the sheer force of overwhelming love.