The mysterious brother Rivers might have been one of the robbers,--perhaps the one who accompanied Mrs.Barker to San Jose.

But it was plain that the young girl had no complicity with the actions of the gang, whatever might have been her companion's confederation.

In the prescience of a true lover, he knew that she must have been deceived and kept in utter ignorance of it.

There was no look of it in her lovely, guileless eyes; her very impulsiveness and ingenuousness would have long since betrayed the secret.

Was it left for him, at this very outset of his passion, to be the one to tell her?
Could he bear to see those frank, beautiful eyes dimmed with shame and sorrow?
His own grew moist.
Another idea began to haunt him.