“No, I’ll go now.”  Royal Beaudry spoke with the obstinacy of a timid man who was afraid to postpone the decision.

“No hurry, is there?” The black eyes of Rutherford fixed him steadily.

His sister broke in impatiently.  “Can’t he go when he wants to, Hal?  Get Mr. Street’s horse.”  She whirled on Beaudry scornfully.  “That is what you call yourself, isn’t it—­Street?”

The unhappy youth murmured “Yes.”

“Let him get his own horse if he wants to hit the trail in such a hurry,” growled Hal sulkily.

Beulah walked straight to the stable.  Awkwardly Beaudry followed her after a moment or two.  The girl was leading his horse from the stall.

“I’ll saddle him, Miss Rutherford,” he demurred, the blanket in his hand.

She looked at him a moment, dropped the bridle, and turned stiffly away.  He understood perfectly that she had been going to saddle the horse to justify the surface hospitality of the Rutherfords to a man they despised.

Hal was still on the porch when Roy rode up, but Beulah was nowhere in sight.  The young hillman did not look up from the rivet he was driving.  Beaudry swung to the ground and came forward.

“I’m leaving now.  I should like to tell Miss Rutherford how much I’m in her debt for taking a stranger in so kindly,” he faltered.

“I reckon you took her in just as much as she did you, Mr. Spy.”  Rutherford glowered at him menacingly.  “I’d advise you to straddle that horse and git.”

Roy controlled his agitation except for a slight trembling of the fingers that grasped the mane of his cowpony.  “You’ve used a word that isn’t fair.  I didn’t come here to harm any of your people.  If I could explain to Miss Rutherford—­”

She stood in the doorway, darkly contemptuous.  Fire flashed in her eyes, but the voice of the girl was coldly insolent.

“It is not necessary,” she informed him.

Her brother leaned forward a little.  His crouched body looked like a coiled spring in its tenseness.  “Explain yourself down that road, Mr. Street—­pronto,” he advised.

Beaudry flashed a startled glance at him, swung to the saddle, and was away at a canter.  The look in Rutherford’s glittering eyes had sent a flare of fear over him.  The impulse of it had lifted him to the back of the horse and out of the danger zone.

But already he was flogging himself with his own contempt.  He had given way to panic before a girl who had been brought up to despise a quitter.  She herself had nerves as steady as chilled steel.  He had seen her clench her strong white little teeth without a murmur through a long afternoon of pain.  Gameness was one of the fundamentals of her creed, and he had showed the white feather.  It added to his punishment, too, that he worshiped pluck with all the fervor of one who knew he had none.  Courage seemed to him the one virtue worth while; cowardice the unpardonable sin.  He made no excuses for himself.  From his father he inherited the fine tradition of standing up to punishment to a fighting finish.  His mother, too, had been a thoroughbred.  Yet he was a weakling.  His heart pumped water instead of blood whenever the call to action came.