"_Me_ conceited? Anything but that. Come, now, Kitty, for whom were you crying? I must know."

"Please let me go, Mr. Yates," said Kitty, with an effort at dignity.

"d.i.c.k is my name, Kit."

"Well, mine is not Kit.

"You're quite right. Now that you mention it, I will call you Kitty, which is much prettier than the abbreviation."

"I did not 'mention it.' Please let me go. n.o.body has the right to call me anything but Miss Bartlett; that is, _you_ haven't, anyhow."

"Well, Kitty, don't you think it is about time to give somebody the right? Why won't you look up at me, so that I can tell for sure whether I should have accused you of crying? Look up--Miss Bartlett."

"Please let me go, Mr. Yates. Mother will be here in a minute."

"Mother is a wise and thoughtful woman. We'll risk mother. Besides, I'm not in the least afraid of her, and I don't believe you are. I think she is at this moment giving poor Mr. Stoliker a piece of her mind; otherwise, I imagine, he would have followed me. I saw it in his eye."

"I hate that man," said Kitty inconsequently.

"I like him, because he brought me here, even if I was handcuffed.

Kitty, why don't you look up at me? Are you afraid?"

"What should I be afraid of?" asked Kitty, giving him one swift glance from her pretty blue eyes. "Not of you, I hope."

"Well, Kitty, I sincerely hope not. Now, Miss Bartlett, do you know why I came out here?"

"For something more to eat, very likely," said the girl mischievously.

"Oh, I say, that to a man in captivity is both cruel and unkind.

Besides, I had a first-rate breakfast, thank you. No such motive drew me into the kitchen. But I will tell you. You shall have it from my own lips. _That_ was the reason!"

He suited the action to the word, and kissed her before she knew what was about to happen. At least, Yates, with all his experience, thought he had taken her unawares. Men often make mistakes in little matters of this kind. Kitty pushed him with apparent indignation from her, but she did not strike him across the face, as she had done before, when he merely attempted what he had now accomplished. Perhaps this was because she had been taken so completely by surprise.

"I shall call my mother," she threatened.

"Oh, no, you won't. Besides, she wouldn't come." Then this frivolous young man began to sing in a low voice the flippant refrain, "Here's to the girl that gets a kiss, and runs and tells her mother," ending with the wish that she should live and die an old maid and never get another.

Kitty should not have smiled, but she did; she should have rebuked his levity, but she didn't.

"It is about the great and disastrous consequences of living and dying an old maid that I want to speak to you. I have a plan for the prevention of such a catastrophe, and I would like to get your approval of it."

Yates had released the girl, partly because she had wrenched herself away from him, and partly because he heard a movement in the dining room, and expected the entrance of Stoliker or some of the others.

Miss Kitty stood with her back to the table, her eyes fixed on a spring flower, which she had unconsciously taken from a vase standing on the window-ledge. She smoothed the petals this way and that, and seemed so interested in botanical investigation that Yates wondered whether she was paying attention to what he was saying or not. What his plan might have been can only be guessed; for the Fates ordained that they should be interrupted at this critical moment by the one person on earth who could make Yates' tongue falter.

The outer door to the kitchen burst open, and Margaret Howard stood on the threshold, her lovely face aflame with indignation, and her dark hair down over her shoulders, forming a picture of beauty that fairly took Yates' breath away. She did not notice him.

"O Kitty," she cried, "those wretches have stolen all our horses! Is your father here?"

"What wretches?" asked Kitty, ignoring the question, and startled by the sudden advent of her friend.

"The Fenians. They have taken all the horses that were in the fields, and your horses as well. So I ran over to tell you."

"Have they taken your own horse, too?"

"No. I always keep Gypsy in the stable. The thieves did not come near the house. Oh, Mr. Yates! I did not see you." And Margaret's hand, with the unconscious vanity of a woman, sought her disheveled hair, which Yates thought too becoming ever to be put in order again.

Margaret reddened as she realized, from Kitty's evident embarra.s.sment, that she had impulsively broken in upon a conference of two.

"I must tell your father about it," she said hurriedly, and before Yates could open the door she had done so for herself. Again she was taken aback to see so many sitting round the table.

There was a moment's silence between the two in the kitchen, but the spell was broken.

"I--I don't suppose there will be any trouble about getting back the horses," said Yates hesitatingly. "If you lose them, the Government will have to pay."

"I presume so," answered Kitty coldly; then: "Excuse me, Mr. Yates; I mustn't stay here any longer." So saying, she followed Margaret into the other room.

Yates drew a long breath of relief. All his old difficulties of preference had arisen when the outer door burst open. He felt that he had had a narrow escape, and began to wonder if he had really committed himself. Then the fear swept over him that Margaret might have noticed her friend's evident confusion, and surmised its cause. He wondered whether this would help him or hurt him with Margaret, if he finally made up his mind to favor her with his serious attentions. Still, he reflected that, after all, they were both country girls, and would no doubt be only too eager to accept a chance to live in New York. Thus his mind gradually resumed its normal state of self-confidence; and he argued that, whatever Margaret's suspicions were, they could not but make him more precious in her eyes. He knew of instances where the very danger of losing a man had turned a woman's wavering mind entirely in the man's favor. When he had reached this point, the door from the dining room opened, and Stoliker appeared.

"We are waiting for you," said the constable.

"All right. I am ready."

As he entered the room he saw the two girls standing together talking earnestly.

"I wish I was a constable for twenty-four hours," cried Mrs. Bartlett.

"I would be hunting horse thieves instead of handcuffing innocent men."

"Come along," said the impa.s.sive Stoliker, taking the handcuffs from his pocket.

"If you three men," continued Mrs. Bartlett, "cannot take those two to camp, or to jail, or anywhere else, without handcuffing them, I'll go along with you myself and protect you, and see that they don't escape.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sam Stoliker, if you have any manhood about you--which I doubt."

"I must do my duty."

The professor rose from his chair. "Mr. Stoliker," he said with determination, "my friend and myself will go with you quietly. We will make no attempt to escape, as we have done nothing to make us fear investigation. But I give you fair warning that if you attempt to put a handcuff on my wrist again I will smash you."

A cry of terror from one of the girls, at the prospect of a fight, caused the professor to realize where he was. He turned to them and said in a contrite voice:

"Oh! I forgot you were here. I sincerely beg your pardon."

Margaret, with blazing eyes, cried:

"Don't beg my pardon, but--smash him."

Then a consciousness of what she had said overcame her, and the excited girl hid her blushing face on her friend's shoulder, while Kitty lovingly stroked her dark, tangled hair.

Renmark took a step toward them, and stopped. Yates, with his usual quickness, came to the rescue, and his cheery voice relieved the tension of the situation.

"Come, come, Stoliker, don't be an idiot. I do not object in the least to the handcuffs; and, if you are dying to handcuff somebody, handcuff me. It hasn't struck your luminous mind that you have not the first t.i.ttle of evidence against my friend, and that, even if I were the greatest criminal in America, the fact of his being with me is no crime.