sweet air.



CHAPTER III

Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman's man. He
admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or
die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his
sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born
and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with
the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious laps
of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of
the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But only now
and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any given moment a
supreme physical crisis had come, women would have turned instinctively
in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.

He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover.
The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle
meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he
could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his
face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought.
There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more
forcefully than speech.

Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present
situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment
Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the