“So that’s the girl you intend to marry?  We’ll see, by God!”

CHAPTER VIII

DEXTRY MAKES A CALL

The water front had a strong attraction for Helen Chester, and rarely did a fair day pass without finding her in some quiet spot from which she could watch the shifting life along its edge, the ships at anchor, and the varied incidents of the surf.

This morning she sat in a dory pulled high up on the beach, bathed in the bright sunshine, and staring at the rollers, while lines of concentration wrinkled her brow.  The wind had blown for some days till the ocean beat heavily across the shallow bar, and now, as it became quieter, longshoremen were launching their craft, preparing to resume their traffic.

Not until the previous day had the news of her friends’ misfortune come to her, and although she had heard no hint of fraud, she began to realize that they were involved in a serious tangle.  To the questions which she anxiously put to her uncle he had replied that their difficulty arose from a technicality in the mining laws which another man had been shrewd enough to profit by.  It was a complicated question, he said, and one requiring time to thrash out to an equitable settlement.  She had undertaken to remind him of the service these men had done her, but, with a smile, he interrupted; he could not allow such things to influence his judicial attitude, and she must not endeavor to prejudice him in the discharge of his duty.  Recognizing the justice of this, she had desisted.

For many days the girl had caught scattered talk between the Judge and McNamara, and between Struve and his associates, but it all seemed foreign and dry, and beyond the fact that it bore on the litigation over the Anvil Creek mines, she understood nothing and cared less, particularly as a new interest had but recently come into her life, an interest in the form of a man—­McNamara.

He had begun with quiet, half-concealed admiration of her, which had rapidly increased until his attentions had become of a singularly positive and resistless character.

Judge Stillman was openly delighted, while the court of one like Alec McNamara could but flatter any girl.  In his presence, Helen felt herself rebelling at his suit, yet as distance separated them she thought ever more kindly of it.  This state of mind contrasted oddly with her feelings towards the other man she had met, for in this country there were but two.  When Glenister was with her she saw his love lying nakedly in his eyes and it exercised some spell which drew her to him in spite of herself, but when he had gone, back came the distrust, the terror of the brute she felt was there behind it all.  The one appealed to her while present, the other pled strongest while away.  Now she was attempting to analyze her feelings and face the future squarely, for she realized that her affairs neared a crisis, and this, too, not a month after meeting the men.  She wondered if she would come to love her uncle’s friend.  She did not know.  Of the other she was sure—­she never could.