you dare to say a thing like that. I don't know why----"

"You can't marry Searle," he interrupted, "because you are going to
marry me."

He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them both.

"Be back by and by," he added, and off he went, through the kitchen,
leaving Beth by the table speechless, burning and confused, with a
hundred wild emotions in her heart.

He continued out at the rear of the place, where little Mrs. Dick was
valiantly tugging at two large buckets of water. He relieved her of
the burden.

"Say, Priscilla," he drawled, "if a smoke-faced Easterner comes around
here while I'm gone, looking for--you know--Miss Kent, remember he
can't have a room in your house if he offers a million and walks on his
hands and prays in thirteen languages."

Little Mrs. Dick glanced up at him shrewdly.

"Have you got it as bad as that? Snakes alive! All right, I guess
I'll remember."

"Be good," said Van, and off he went to the assayer's shop for which he
had started before.

The assayer glanced up briefly. He was busy at a bucking-board, where,
with energetic application of a very heavy weight, on the end of a