“I believe I am disappointed in you,” the girl declared, and yet in a tone that did not quite carry conviction. “You’re much too modern to be real interesting.”
The young man looked disconsolate. “Alas!” said he. “Fate seems to be against me.” He glanced up hopefully. “I might grow a very long beard, Miss Bayley, if that would help to make me less modern and more interesting.” Then, as she only laughed her reply, the young engineer continued. “But you haven’t told me what clues you possessed that led you to discover my supposed well-hidden identity.”
Josephine looked at him searchingly. “Can men keep a secret?” she inquired.
“Much better than boys can, or so I’m beginning to think,” was the reply.
“No, you are wrong,” Miss Bayley defended. “Ken didn’t really tell. In fact, he doesn’t know that he told at all. As I look back now upon our conversations concerning the old man in the mountains, I realize that Ken did his very best to keep your secret, but he said such strange things sometimes. He hasn’t told,—not one word,—but one day when I offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said he was wishing somebody would get married, and he seemed so doleful about it that my curiosity was aroused.
“Then, when I told him that I thought he was rather young to be a match-maker, he confessed that what he was really wishing was that there would be a blizzard, so that his friend Rattlesnake Sam would have to leave the mountains and come down and stay at their cabin.
“Well, the storm did come and so, too, did you. Wasn’t the inference a natural one?”
The young man nodded. “It wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to unravel that mystery,” he began, and then paused, for he was sure the little ripple of laughter that he heard was prefacing a merry remark. Nor was he wrong, for Josephine continued: “There is one part, however, that I cannot understand. Whom do you suppose Ken wants to have married? If he hadn’t mentioned it right in the very same breath with the blizzard, I wouldn’t be so curious.”
“Your curiosity is quite natural, Miss Bayley, and it’s going to be completely satisfied,” the young man said seriously. “I may need your help almost any day now, and so you, too, may share the secret with Dixie and Ken.” Then he told the whole story, beginning with the making of the mountain road, two years previous, and ending with his recent flight from the South and his reason for hiding.
To his surprise, his listener exclaimed: “Mr. Edrington, you are indeed to be congratulated upon your narrow escape. If you know Marlita Arden as well as I do, you are then aware that what she needs most is variety and admiration. I doubt if she would be the comrade sort of wife that I believe you would want.” Then, more seriously, “I do not dislike Marlita, understand, but I would be sorry to have my brother Tim marry her.”