as a concession to the practical evidence of the surrounding winter, but she had also brought out a feather hat and sable muff which had once graced a fashionable suburb of Boston.  Even Falkner had exchanged his slouch hat and picturesque serape for a beaver overcoat and fur cap of Hale’s which had been pressed upon him by Kate, under the excuse of the exigencies of the season.  Within a stone’s throw of the thicket, turbulent with the savage forces of nature, they walked with the abstraction of people hearing only their own voices; in the face of the solemn peaks clothed with white austerity they talked gravely of dress.

“I don’t mean to say,” said Kate demurely, “that you’re to give up the serape entirely; you can wear it on rainy nights and when you ride over here from your friend’s house to spend the evening—­for the sake of old times,” she added, with an unconscious air of referring to an already antiquated friendship; “but you must admit it’s a little too gorgeous and theatrical for the sunlight of day and the public highway.”

“But why should that make it wrong, if the experience of a people has shown it to be a garment best fitted for their wants and requirements?” said Falkner argumentatively.

“But you are not one of those people,” said Kate, “and that makes all the difference.  You look differently and act differently, so that there is something irreconcilable between your clothes and you that makes you look odd.”

“And to look odd, according to your civilized prejudices, is to be wrong,” said Falkner bitterly.

“It is to seem different from what one really is—­which is wrong.  Now, you are a mining superintendent, you tell me.  Then you don’t want to look like a Spanish brigand, as you do in that serape.  I am sure if you had ridden up to a stage-coach while I was in it, I’d have handed you my watch and purse without a word.  There! you are not offended?” she added, with a laugh, which did not, however, conceal a certain earnestness.  “I suppose I ought to have said I would have given it gladly to such a romantic figure, and perhaps have got out and danced a saraband or bolero with you—­if that is the thing to do nowadays.  Well!” she said, after a dangerous pause, “consider that I’ve said it.”

He had been walking a little before her, with his face turned towards the distant mountain.  Suddenly he stopped and faced her.  “You would have given enough of your time to the highwayman, Miss Scott, as would have enabled you to identify him for the police—­and no more.  Like your brother, you would have been willing to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the laws of civilization and good order.”