Following their interview with Mary, Rob McClure and Sykes concluded it expedient to make a flying visit to the city. Mary found her father in remarkably good humour on his return. So affable was his mood that she was beginning to hope for a reprieve of the fates to avert the calamity she feared. But her hope was short lived. Riding into the stable after a long evening canter through the Valley she was greeted pleasantly by her father.

"Is Bobs going good to-day?" was his interested question.

"Bobs never misses," was the reply. "He danced along in wonderful form, but I could not enter into his gaiety. I bounced around upon his back a most unresponsive dreamer."

He lifted his eyebrows.

"Surely you are not yet worrying over our conversation?"

The kindliness of his tone drew the simple admission:

"Yes, Daddy."

"Have you decided to fall in with your good prospects?"

She studied his eyes with a keenness that alarmed him. He read her answer in the wearied face and, speaking quickly, forestalled her reply.

"I will say no more about Ned Pullar," said he. "I am willing to leave it all with you. I am confident you will see after a while that it is best to forget him. Lest you should act rashly I want you to know that not only your own happiness but my future career rests wholly with you. I am now a partner in the new firm of brokers, Sykes, McClure and Sykes. Nothing but a foolish spurning of your wonderful opportunity with Chesley Sykes can hold back the most astonishing possibilities for us all."

The girl's head drooped. She realized that snares were being skilfully and cruelly laid. To her father she had become a mere chattel.

"Daddy," she said gently, "it grieves me to disobey you, to disappoint you. But once for all you must know that no inducement, however tempting to me or however disappointing to you in my refusal of it, will persuade me to do the thing you urge."

Again to her surprise, he showed no great chagrin. Instead he betrayed an over anxiety in his desire to conciliate her.

Through the long, sleepless hours of the night she brooded, striving to think a way out. The sense of personal peril grew upon her. She remembered the light in her father's eyes as he told her of his good fortune. She shuddered as she recalled it. In the morning, as she rode over the Valley, she decided to see Ned at the earliest moment.

Rob McClure was greatly alarmed at the invulnerable front the girl presented. Arrived in his office, he drew a bundle of documents from a drawer and examined them. The title fascinated him. He rocked back in his chair to con its lure when his eyes caught the vision of the two faces above. Suddenly he realized that upon the inscrutable and inviolable will behind the sweet face of Mary rested his fortune. With Mary and not with himself rested the decision that should ratify or destroy his arrangement with Sykes. It all depended upon the girl above with the innocent face. Could he leave it to her? A keen study of the pure eye and firm brow shook his confidence in a desirable outcome. Rising, he leaned toward the picture with an abandon that betrayed his intensity of desire.

"Mary!" he whispered. "You will throw me down. I feel it. Sykes is right. There is no other way. The little chit is blind. I shall be forced to do it. I will see Sykes. She will surrender when there is nothing else to do."

This colloquy with the silent photograph had momentous results for the fair original.

At noon there was the clatter of hoofs outside the Pullar homestead and the winding of a silvery halloo. Ned went out.

"To saddle!" cried Mary as Ned appeared. "Get Darkey and come! We'll ride at high noon! We'll brew a tale on the King's Highway."

Aware that some serious matter prompted Mary's visit Ned was up on Darkey in a trice and they rode out on an endless trail of the undulating plain. When deep out in the lonely stretch Mary drew Bobs to a walk.

"Ned," she said, "are you prepared for a most unusual proposition?"

"Anything you propose will meet with my entire support."

"Then hear me. The danger you feared so long ago is imminent. Father has learned of our engagement from the lips of Chesley Sykes. I have talked with Father. You can easily surmise what that interview involved. But a............