Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/250

 his life, and Beulah had accepted the family tradition of hospitality to those at odds with society.

A fierce, untamed girl of primitive instincts, she was the heritor of the family temperament. But like threads of gold there ran through the warp of her being a fineness that was her salvation. She hated passionately cruelty and falsehood and deceit. All her life she had walked near pitch and had never been defiled.

Hal Rutherford was too close to her not to feel the estrangement of her spirit. He watched her anxiously, and at last one morning he spoke. She was standing on the porch waiting for Jeff to bring Blacky when Rutherford came out and put his arm around her shoulder.

"What is it, honey?" he asked timidly.

"It's—everything," she answered, her gaze still on the distant hills.

"You have n't quarreled with Brad?"

"No—and I'm not likely to if he 'll let me alone."

Her father did not press the point. If Brad and she had fallen out, the young man would have to make his own amende.

"None of the boys been deviling you?"

"No."