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Yet, under this perfunctory rebuke, his weak vanity could not be hidden, and he enjoyed the evident admiration of a creature whom he believed to be half-witted and degraded all the more keenly because it did not make him jealous. She could not take Flip from him. Rendered garrulous by liquor, he went to voice his contempt for those who might attempt it. Taking advantage of his daughter’s absence to resume her homely garments, he whispered confidentially to Lance,–

“Ye see these yer fine dresses, ye might think is presents. Pr’aps Flip lets on they are? Pr’aps she don’t know any better. But they ain’t presents. They’re only samples o’ dressmaking and jewelry that a vain, conceited shrimp of a feller up in Sacramento sends down here to get customers for. In course I’m to pay for ’em. In course he reckons I’m to do it. In course I calkilate to do it; but he needn’t try to play ’em off as presents. He talks suthin’ o’ coming down here, sportin’ hisself off on Flip as a fancy buck! Not ez long ez the old man’s here, you bet.” Thoroughly carried away by his fancied wrongs, it was perhaps fortunate that he did not observe the flashing eyes of Lance behind his lank and lustreless wig; but seeing only the figure of Lance, as he had conjured him, he went on: “That’s why I want you to hang around her. Hang around her ontil my boy,–him that’s comin’ home on a visit,–gets here, and I reckon he’ll clear out that yar Sacramento counter-jumper. Only let me get a sight o’ him afore Flip does, eh? D’ye hear? Dog my skin if I don’t believe the d—-d Injin’s drunk.” It was fortunate that at that moment Flip reappeared, and, dropping on the hearth between her father and the infuriated Lance, let her hand slip in his with a warning pressure. The light touch momentarily recalled him to himself and her, but not until the quick-witted girl had had revealed to her in one startled wave of consciousness the full extent of Lance’s infirmity of temper. With the instinct of awakened tenderness came a sense of responsibility, and a vague premonition of danger. The coy blossom of her heart was scarce unfolded before it was chilled by approaching shadows. Fearful of, she knew not what, she hesitated. Every moment of Lance’s stay was imperiled by a single word that might spring from his suppressed white lips; beyond and above the suspicions his sudden withdrawal might awaken in her father’s breast, she was dimly conscious of some mysterious terror without that awaited him. She listened to the furious onslaught of the wind upon the sycamores beside their cabin, and thought she heard it there; she listened to the sharp fusillade of rain upon roof and pane, and the turbulent roar and rush of leaping mountain torrents at their very feet, and fancied it was there. She suddenly sprang to the window, and, pressing her eyes to the pane, saw through the misty turmoil of tossing boughs and swaying branches the scintillating intermittent flames of torches moving on the trail above, and KNEW it was there!

In an instant she was collected and calm. “Dad,” she said, in her ordinary indifferent tone, “there’s torches movin’ up toward the diamond pit. Likely it’s tramps. I’ll take the squaw and see.” And before the old man could stagger to his feet she had dragged Lance with her into the road.

CHAPTER VI.

The wind charged down upon them, slamming the door at their backs, extinguishing the broad shaft of light that had momentarily shot out into the darkness, and swept them a dozen yards away. Gaining the lee of a madrono tree, Lance opened his blanketed arms, enfolded the girl, and felt her for one brief moment tremble and nestle in his bosom like some frightened animal. “Well,” he said, gayly, “what next?” Flip recovered herself. “You’re safe now anywhere outside the house. But did you expect them tonight?” Lance shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?” “Hush!” returned the girl; “they’re coming this way.”