“Yes—­the deputy sheriff.  He came to help me.”

“You!”

“Yes, me!” A coquettish little toss of her head added to his confusion.  “He threw up his job just to follow me, without my knowing it, to see that I didn’t come to any harm.  He saw me only once, too, at the house when he came to take possession.  He said he thought I was ‘clear grit’ to risk everything to find father, and he said he saw it in me when he was there; that’s how he guessed where I was gone when I ran away, and followed me.”

“He was as right as he was lucky,” said Masterton gravely.  “But how did you get here?”

She slipped down on the floor beside him with an unconscious movement that her masculine garments only made the more quaintly girlish, and, clasping her knee with both hands, looked at the fire as she rocked herself slightly backward and forward as she spoke.

“It will shock a proper man like you, I know,” she began demurely, “but I came alone, with only a Chinaman to guide me.  I got these clothes from our laundryman, so that I shouldn’t attract attention.  I would have got a Chinese lady’s dress, but I couldn’t walk in their shoes,”—­she looked down at her little feet encased in wooden sandals,—­“and I had a long way to walk.  But even if I didn’t look quite right to Chinamen, no white man was able to detect the difference.  You passed me twice in the stage, and you didn’t know me.  I traveled night and day, most of the time walking, and being passed along from one Chinaman to another, or, when we were alone, being slung on a pole between two coolies like a bale of goods.  I ate what they could give me, for I dared not go into a shop or a restaurant; I couldn’t shut my eyes in their dens, so I stayed awake all night.  Yet I got ahead of you and the sheriff,—­though I didn’t know at the time what you were after,” she added presently.

He was overcome with wondering admiration of her courage, and of self-reproach at his own short-sightedness.  This was the girl he had looked upon as a spoiled village beauty, satisfied with her small triumphs and provincial elevation, and vacant of all other purpose.  Here was she—­the all-unconscious heroine—­and he her critic helpless at her feet!  It was not a cheerful reflection, and yet he took a certain delight in his expiation.  Perhaps he had half believed in her without knowing it.  What could he do or say?  I regret to say he dodged the question meanly.

“And you think your disguise escaped detection?” he said, looking markedly at her escaped braid of hair.

She followed his eyes rather than his words, half pettishly caught up the loosened braid, swiftly coiled it around the top of her head, and, clapping the weather-beaten and battered conical hat back again upon it, defiantly said:  “Yes!  Everybody isn’t as critical as you are, and even you wouldn’t be—­of a Chinaman!”

He had never seen her except when she was arrayed with the full intention to affect the beholders and perfectly conscious of her attractions; he was utterly unprepared for this complete ignoring of adornment now, albeit he was for the first time aware how her real prettiness made it unnecessary.  She looked fully as charming in this grotesque head-covering as she had in that paragon of fashion, the new hat, which had excited his tolerant amusement.