"What do you mean?" ejaculates Harry, thinking Mr. Chauncey has gone daft.
"I mean what I say. Innocence won't do. Has old Tranyon given you his mine as well as his daughter? Ollie and his mother quarrel every day over his desertion of the heiress. The widow says that she and Louise won't be able to live on their income now, and Oliver has turned sullen, and says if they can't, Louise can go into a Protestant nunnery. So that young lady is in despair."
"What the dickens do you mean?" gasps Harry. Then he says: "Are you crazy?" and looking into Ferdie's face, and seeing sanity there, suddenly seizes him, leads him apart, and commands: "Tell me what you're driving at!"
Then Mr. Chauncey, guessing from Lawrence's manner that he does not know what has happened, tells him what took place in Salt Lake the evening before their departure, to which Harry listens with staring eyes.
As Ferdie closes, he suddenly breaks out: "Now I understand!—Tranyon's deed to me—it was that angel's doing!" Then mutters: "My God! She'll think me a monster of ingratitude! A prig, like that scalliwag up-stairs;" he turns up his thumb towards where Mr. Livingston is supposed to be.
To this Mr. Chauncey says nothing, though his eyes have grown very large.
After a second's thought, Lawrence continues very earnestly: "You say I saved your life. May I ask you a favor in return?"
"Anything!" cries Ferdie.
"Very well! You can explain this matter to Erma Travenion, so that she will know that I followed her for love, all over California, and did not desert her for pride, because she was the daughter of a Mormon, in Utah. Will you come with me, and make that explanation?"
"Yes—when?"