“Perhaps I can help you to prevail on Miss Natalie to change her mind.  That would be a real service, wouldn’t it?” Under his grave glance Dan’s heart leaped.  “I can’t believe she’s indifferent to you, my boy.  You’re suited to each other, and there’s no reason on earth why you shouldn’t marry.  Perhaps she doesn’t know her own mind.”

“You’re mighty good, but—­” The lover shook his head.

Murray smiled again.  “I think you’re too timid.  Don’t plead and beg—­just carry her off.  Be firm and masterful.  Be rough—­”

“The idea!” exclaimed Eliza.  “She’s no cave-woman!”

“Exactly.  If she were, Dan would need to court her and send her bouquets of wild violets.  She’s over-civilized, and therefore he needs to be primitive.”

Dan blushed and faltered.  “I can’t be firm with her, Murray; I turn to jelly whenever she looks at me.”  There was something so friendly and kind in his employer’s attitude that the young fellow was tempted to pour out all his vexations; he had never felt so close to O’Neil as now; but his masculine reserve could not be overcome all in a moment, and he held his tongue.

When Murray had put the two young people fully at their ease he rose to go, but Eliza’s eager voice made him turn with his hand on the door-knob.

“What can we do about this unfortunate Illis affair?” she asked.  “Dan must try to—­”

“Leave that to me.  I’ll straighten it out somehow.  It is all my fault, and I’ll have to meet it.”  He pressed their hands warmly.

When he had gone Dan heaved a great sigh of relief.

“I’m glad it happened just as it did, Sis,” he announced.  “He knows my secret now, and I can see that he never cared for Natalie.  It’s a load off my mind to know the track is clear.”

“What a simpleton you are!” she told him.  “Don’t you see he’s merely paying his debt?”

“I wonder—­” Dan eyed her in amazement.

“Gee!  If that’s so he is a prince, isn’t he?”

The same ship which had brought the ominous news to O’Neil also brought Curtis Gordon north.  He had remained in Seattle only long enough to see the Illis story in print, and then had hastened back to the front.  But his satisfaction over the mischief he had done received a rude jolt when at his first moment of leisure he looked over the late magazines which he had bought before taking leave.  In one which had appeared on the news-stands that very day he found, to his amazement, an article by Miss Eliza Appleton, in which his own picture appeared.  He pounced upon it eagerly; and then, as he read, his eyes narrowed and his jaw stiffened.  There, spread out to the public gaze, was his own record in full, including his initial venture into the Kyak coal-fields, his abandonment of that project in favor of Hope Consolidated, and an account of his connection with the latter enterprise.  Eliza had not hesitated to call the mine worthless, and she showed how he,