in New York. "I wish I could make myself enjoy snubbing the extraordinary
creature," she went on, as she ate her dinner, throwing an occasional
sentence concerning the scenery, or, as a last resort, the weather, to her
chastened companion. "But it's difficult to snub a person who's saved your
life and lent you money and found your gold bag. That's why he oughtn't to
have put me in this position--because I owe him gratitude. It's really
horrid." And she began to feel sincerely that the New Type had conducted
itself unworthily.

She gave Nick a cool bow when she was ready to go, and left him plunged in
gloom, but stubbornly unrepentant. "It's a tough proposition I'm up
against," he thought, "but a man's as good as his nerve. And I'll fight
till the next spring rains sooner than let her slip away out of my life."

It was deep blue dusk when Angela went back to her stateroom, too dark to
look out of the window; yet she had lost interest in the book which she
had found absorbing earlier in the day. It seemed irrelevant somehow; and
though there was no reason why they should do so, her own affairs appeared
more insistently exciting than before. "It's the call of the West
already," she answered her own question. "I hear the voice of my father's
country."

And then her thoughts returned to Nick.

"I wonder what _he_ is doing now--whether I made him see the error of his
ways?" she asked herself, stroking Timmy, lent by Kate. And she was not
sorry for the forest creature: not sorry at all. It was stupid even to
think of him. But in her lap, a splendid plaything for the black cat, was
the gold bag. It seemed associated with Mr. Hilliard now. Odd, how
different it looked since she had got it back! Bigger, somehow, though, of