His tone was light and easy, but his usually smiling face was clouded. Betty sprang to her feet.
"What is it, Jim?" she demanded, searching his face. "Something is wrong. I know it is."
Jim seated himself directly in front of Dave, who now watched him with added interest. He now noticed several things in the boy he did not remember having observed before. The face in repose, or rather without the smile it usually wore, bore signs of weakness about the mouth. The whole of the lower part of it lacked the imprint of keen decision. There was something almost effeminate about the mould of his full lips, something soft and yielding—even vicious. The rest of his face was good, and even intellectual. He was particularly handsome, with crisp curling hair of a light brown that closely matched his large expressive eyes. His tall athletic figure was strangely at variance with the intellectual cast of his face and head. But what Dave most noticed were the distinct lines of dissipation about his eyes. And he wondered how it was he had never seen them before. Perhaps it was that he so rarely saw Jim without his cheery smile. Perhaps, now that Betty had told him what had taken place, his observation was closer, keener.
"What is it, Jim?" He added his voice to Betty's inquiry. Jim's face became gloomier. He turned to the girl, who had resumed her seat at Dave's side.
"Have you told him?" he asked, and for a moment his eyes brightened with a shadow of their old smile.
The girl nodded, and Dave answered for her.
"She's told me enough to know you're the luckiest fellow in the Red Sand Valley," he said kindly.
Jim glanced up into the girl's face with all the passion of his youthful heart shining in his handsome eyes.
"Yes, I am, Dave—in that way," he said. Then his smile faded out and was replaced by a brooding frown. "But all the luck hasn't come my way. I've talked to Parson Tom."
"Ah!" Dave's ejaculation was ominous.