The Forbidden Trail

"Curiously enough, I do!" replied Charley with the old whimsical lift of her eyebrows. "Oh, you dear old single-track thinking machine, you!"

Roger held her off and looked at her wonderingly. "You mean--Oh, Charley, I have been a fool in every possible way, haven't I?"

Charley laughed, with her cheek against Roger's, her arm about his neck. Roger held her closer still. "Well," he said huskily, "I'm through with one kind of foolishness! Charley, will you ride into Archer's Springs to-morrow and marry me?"

The girl laughed outright. "I certainly won't! Let me go, Roger. Here come Elsa and Dick."

Elsa entered the room, her head on one side, her eyes bright and questioning.

"Well, Rog?" she exclaimed breathlessly.

"Yes, Elsa," he replied. "By Jove, I can't believe it myself but Charley says she'll marry me."

"Thank the Lord for that!" sighed Elsa.

"You're not good enough for her, Roger," said Dick, coming across the room with right hand outstretched but a grim face. "But when I think about Elsa taking me--"

He did not finish the sentence but Roger nodded understandingly and the two men, regarding each other seriously over a long hand clasp, laid at that moment the foundation of a close friendship that was to last them to the end of their lives.

"Poor old Ernest!" Roger broke the silence with a sigh.

"Try not to think about him to-night, Roger," Charley laid a gentle hand on his arm. "You are so fearfully tired, I'm going to fix the porch couch and you must go to bed at once."

Roger was glad to stretch out on the cot and close his weary eyes. But he could not sleep. The thrilling joy of Charley's welcome, the burning soft touch of her lips on his and with this, the sick sense of loss in the constantly recurring thought of Ernest combined to make sleep long in coming. He heard Dick, then Elsa call good night. He heard the subdued clatter of Charley in the kitchen making her breakfast preparations, and after a few minutes the sound of Felicia's alarm clock being wound for the night.

"Charley!" he called softly.

In a moment Charley's lovely head was outlined against the lamplight as she paused in the door.

"Haven't you been asleep, Roger dear?"

"Charley, how could Ernest have done it? I can't sleep for thinking about it."

Charley came over to his cot and sitting down on the edge of it, lifted Roger's hot hand against her cheek. "You must realize that he thinks he loves the 'Vaterland' and that he is doing the best thing for the world in placing loyalty to Germany first."