Then she made a request which perturbed him still more: “You came up here on horseback, I think you said. May I borrow the horse?”
“Do you mean that you’re going away?” he gulped.
She spread her hands and again glanced down at her attire. She was hiding deeper motives behind the thin screen of concern for her wardrobe, trying to make a jest of the situation, and not succeeding. “You must own up that I need to go shopping.”
He turned from her to the chasm where the logs were tumbling along.
“And there’s nothing to keep me here any longer, Mr. Latisan, now that you have come back!”
He faced her again, swinging with a haste that ground his heels sharply on the ledge. But she put up her hand when he opened his mouth.
“Do you think it will do us any good to bring up what has happened? I don’t. I implore you not to mention it. You have come back to your work—it’s waiting for you. After what you have done to-day you’ll never need to lower your eyes before any man on this river. In my heart, when I gave you your cap and jacket, I was asking you to take back your work. I ask you with all the earnestness that’s in me! Won’t you do it?” There was a hint of a sob in her tones, but her eyes were full of the confidence of one who felt that she was not asking vainly.
He did not hesitate. But words were still beyond the reach of his tongue. He dragged off the billycock hat which he had bought in town and scaled it far out into the turbid flood. He pulled off the wrinkled coat of the ready-made suit and tossed it down the side of the cliff. With the cap on his head and buckling the belt of the jacket he stood before her. “The men gave me my chance to-day; you’re giving me a bigger one.”
“Then I’m only wasting your time—up here!”
It had not been in Latisan’s mind that he would make any reference to the past; she had implored him to keep silent and he was determined to obey. He was rigidly resolved to offer no plea for the future; this was the granddaughter—presumably the heiress of Echford Flagg, to be taken into her own after this service she had rendered. A Latisan of the broken Latisans had no right to lift his eyes to her!