He glanced at her sharply. Would she understand? Would she guess? No. In the pure, clear eyes upturned to his he read pity, sympathy interest--nothing more. She nodded.
"When times mended in Southern California he thought he saw his chance to get back all he'd lost: just one o' those dead sure shots which will miss fire. He'd not a cent of his own, so he borrowed, without askin' leave, a few hundreds, that was all, jest a few hundreds from somebody else."
"He was a--thief," said Sadie calmly.
"It's too hard a word that. Now then, I'm getting to the point. My friend, deputy-sheriff like me, found himself in this hell of--I mean in this terrible tight place. He was sent to arrest the father of the girl he loved."
"Oh-h-h!"
This prolonged exclamation sadly puzzled Jeff, whose claim to consideration at the hands of many friends was a guileless transparency of purpose, a candour and simplicity unhappily too rare. Now, his climax, so artfully introduced, provoked nothing more satisfactory than this "Oh-h-h!"
"Well," continued Jeff, gazing almost fiercely into Sadie's eyes, "my friend found the father, and he knew that he could arrest him, or he could earn the everlastin' gratitude of the girl by letting him escape--and helping him to escape."
"And what did your friend do?" Sadie asked quietly.
"What do you think he did, Miss Sadie?"
"Did the girl know that her father was a thief?"