Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/335

 me so that there was no escape," was his dogged, almost defiant, answer.

"I know better," the girl corrected quickly. "You put it up to yourself. You 're that way."

"Am I?" He flashed a questioning look at her. "Then, since you know that, perhaps you know, too, what—what I'm trying to tell you."

"Perhaps I do," she whispered softly to the fire.

There was panic in his eyes. "—That … that I—"

"—That you are sensitive and have a good deal of imagination," the girl concluded gently.

"No, I 'll not feed my vanity with pleasant lies to-night." He gave a little gesture of self-scorn as he rose to throw some dry sticks on the fire. "What I mean and what you mean is that—that I'm an arrant coward." Roy gulped the last words out as if they burned his throat.

"I don't mean that at all," she flamed. "How can you say such a thing about yourself when everybody knows that you 're the bravest man in Washington County?"

"No—no. I'm a born trembler." From where he stood beyond the fire he looked across at her with dumb anguish in his eyes. "You say