“Listen!” With uplifted, peremptory hand again he stopped her.  Nor is it safe to say that any book agent, watching the door slowly closing upon him, ever talked faster, or more rigidly to the point, than did Blair within the next few minutes.

“Perhaps you won’t understand it all right off.  I wouldn’t expect that.  But it’s this way.  I’m representing Harper’s, and Houghton and Mifflin, and Dodd and Mead, and — several other firms” (to satisfy his conscience Blair contended with himself that he might as well as not have been their representative — a mere oversight on their part ought not to be allowed to stand in his way), “and I’m out here to find the best illustrator I can lay hands on to do the pictures for some Indian stuff I’m getting into shape for one of ’em.  I want to see your work.  And, if I like it, I’ll pay you well.  And anyway, I’ll pay every bit of the expense while you finish your series here if you’ll tell me what you know about Wildenai!”

But, at the name, the girl beside him had given a low cry of utter amazement.  She stopped short.

“Do you know it too, then?” she gasped.  “How did you hear about it?”

“Oh, I’ve known it for years,” replied Blair carelessly.  “Some of it I’ve known all my life.  But look here now.  Is it a bargain? — about your helping me, I mean?”

Before he left her, an hour or so later, every detail had been arranged.  Miss Hastings had meekly agreed to return to the hotel in the morning.  Blair would pay her expenses and something he called a retaining fee besides.  That would make an extra fifty dollars, — she smiled to herself in the dark, — a new winter suit at least, and perhaps one or two matinees if she managed!  All this for the information she could give him about the island and its history.  The various points in their contract spun dizzily in her dazed brain.  No spot known to legend to which it was possible to conduct him should remain unvisited.  Four hours out of every day were pledged without fail to his interests.  The rest of the time she might have for her own work.  It had all come about so unexpectedly, and was altogether so extraordinary that, after he had gone, his new employe, stretched uncomfortably upon a narrow cot in the tent of a fellow teacher, spent the remainder of the night in imaginary interviews with Eastern publishers regarding impossible royalties.  She was far too excited to sleep.

And, for a week, the arrangement worked very well, — almost too well.  Every day brought with it some new adventure, and every adventure became a pleasure.

Mounted at Blair’s expense on more or less energetic ponies, for from the first he had insisted that horses were a necessary part of their business equipment, they cantered gaily along the shady canyon trails, or over the sunlit slopes sheeted in pale lavender wherever the wild lilacs were in bloom.  Often, emerging from some thicket of dwarf oak they caught glimpses of a sapphire sea held between red, twisted branches of manzanita as in a frame.  About them rang the music of the meadow larks.  Merry shouts of bathers floated up from the beaches far below, mingled with the distant click of golf balls on the greens.