CHAPTER IX.
OVER A PASS.
True to their resolve, the young heads of the High Valley Ranch rode together to St.Helen's next day,--ostensibly to get their letters; in reality to call on their late departed guests.

They talked amicably as they went; but unconsciously each was watching the other's mood and speech.

To like the same girl makes young men curiously observant of each other.
A disappointment was in store for them.

They had taken it for granted that Clover would be as disengaged and as much at their service as she had been in the valley; and lo! she sat on the piazza with a knot of girls about her, and a young man in an extremely "fetching" costume of snow-white duck, with a flower in his button-hole, was bending over her chair, and talking in a low voice of something which seemed of interest.

He looked provokingly cool and comfortable to the dusty horsemen, and very much at home.