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 the board. When at last she found that by an oversight she had committed a flagrant injustice to Willie's interests, she felt that something must be done. Being fertile in resource, she presently bethought herself of the bright colored wafers she had played with in her childhood, and to her joy she found they were still to be bought. Having possessed herself of a box of them, she proceeded to stick a glittering gilt star upon each side of each checker, both black and white, after which the checkerboard took on a showy theatrical appearance.

Mrs. Nancy rarely felt lonely when playing backgammon. The click of the dice sounded cheerful and sociable; the checkers, with their shining eyes, seemed to take a real interest in the game; and when she scored the result to "Willie" or to "Mother," the old familiar every-day relation seemed restored between them.

To-night Willie was having all the luck, and that was sure to put his mother in the best of spirits. She played on and on, much later than her custom was, till at last the luck turned, and looking at her flat, gold-faced watch, she found, with a shock, that it was ten minutes after ten o'clock.

"My sakes!" she cried. "I ought to be

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 ashamed of myself! Come, David, come right along to bed. You're going to sleep on the mat at the back door."

David, who was nothing if not amenable, cheerfully acceded to this arrangement. Even before his new mistress had finished tying him to the railing, he had curled himself up on the mat and was fast asleep. When she patted him on the head, however, by way of good-night, his tail gave a responsive wag, and little Mrs. Nancy left him with the friendliest feelings.

The next morning the dog was gone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that graceless dog was gone—gone without a word of farewell.

Mrs. Nancy was standing gazing in dejected mood at the fragment of string he had left behind him, when the milkman, one of her special cronies, arrived. The good-natured Sam was full of sympathy.

"I reckon he came in with some ranchman yesterday, and got lost in the town. Like as not he's gone home. Good Lord! I'd just like to see that 'ere ranchman when his dog gits back with a locket round his neck!"

"I washed him too, Sam," Mrs. Nancy lamented, as she accompanied her visitor to the gate. She was too conscientious to detain the man from the performance of his duty.

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 "You washed him!" he cried, as he got into his cart. "Jerusalem! I guess that's the first time a ranch dog ever got a taste of a bath."

And the cart rattled off, leaving David's little friend standing at the gate. It was just after sunrise, and she looked down the street to the mountains, which were bathed in a flood of translucent crimson reflected from the east.

"I wonder if the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem look very different from that!" she mused, as she gazed into the deepening color. When she turned back to the house, she had almost forgotten the ungrateful runaway in thoughts of her boy and his heavenly abiding place.

The next afternoon Mrs. Tarbell was sitting on her front porch endeavoring to readjust the bows upon the old straw bonnet. She had taken them off, and sponged both ribbon and straw, and she was now trying her best to make the bows hold up their heads with the spirit and grace which distinguish a milliner's trimming. She looked up from time to time to enjoy the reflection of the trees in the lake surrounding the house. For her grass was being flooded to-day, and that was always a

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 pretty sight. "It looks almost as pretty as Watkins' pond out on the Goodham turnpike," she reflected, as the water glistened in a broad expanse. She owned a good piece of land, a hundred feet front. Willie had meant to have a vegetable garden when he had got strong enough to work in it.

A horseman had turned into the street, and came cantering toward the house. But horsemen were part of the landscape in Colorado, and she scarcely noticed his approach till a joyful bark caused her to look up, just in time to see David take a flying leap over the gate and come dashing up to her.

"Why, David!" she cried; and then she stopped, abashed, for the horseman was already tying his pony to the post.

"Mrs. Tarbell?" he questioned, as he opened the gate; and without waiting for an answer, he went on: "I've come to thank you for getting my dog away from those scoundrels at the City Hall. They had the decency to tell me where to look for you."

"Oh, pray don't mention it!" said little Mrs. Nancy, with old-fashioned courtesy.

"Not mention it!" cried her visitor. "It was the kindest thing I ever heard of. I don't see what made you do it."

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 "Oh, I couldn't help it. David looked so miserable being dragged along at the end of a pole."

"The cowards!" he cried. "Don't get a chair, ma'am. I like the steps better. Did you call him David?" he asked, with a twinkle of amusement in his kind gray eyes, as he seated himself on the low step, with his long legs trailing off over the walk.

"Well, yes. I didn't know what else to call him, and as he'd been delivered out of the hands of the Philistines"

"That's a good one!" cried the ranchman. "Come here, David. You've got a name now as well as a locket. Do you hear that?"

David had established himself between his master and his rescuer, and looked from one to the other with evident satisfaction. They were soon engaged in an amicable conversation, quite unconscious of the picture they were forming. The tall ranchman, clad in full cowboy paraphernalia, his extended legs encased in leathern "shaps" decorated with long fringes, his belt of rattlesnake-skin, his loose shirt showing a triangle of bronzed throat, in his hand the broad sombrero clasped about with a silver band.

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 Little Mrs. Nancy sitting upright in her chair, in her neat old black gown, holding the forgotten bonnet in her lap, watched her picturesque visitor with the greatest interest. And looking up into the delicate little old face, he noted all the sweetness and brightness which had so long been lost upon the world. To make a clean breast of it, the two fell frankly in love with each other upon the spot, and before the stranger had departed, he had persuaded her to visit his ranch with him the very next Sunday.

"But I don't know what to call you," she said, after having agreed upon this wild escapade.

"That's so," said he. "I go by the name of Wat Warren out here, but they used to call me Walter at home. I wish you would call me Walter."

"It's a pretty name," she said. "I thought some of calling my boy Walter at first."

Warren was on the point of departure, and a sudden embarrassment seemed to seize him. He had his hand in his trousers' pocket. "I 'most forgot the money for the license," he stammered, as he pulled out a couple of silver dollars.

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 Nobody knows what came over Mrs. Nancy, but she suddenly found she could not take the money.

"Oh, that's of no consequence," she said, quite as though she had had at her command the whole treasury surplus of a few years ago. "I should like to make David a present of the license;" and as her two visitors departed at full gallop, she sat down in a flutter of pleasurable excitement.

How surprising it all was! She looked back upon the last hour quite incredulous. She felt as though she had known this strange young man all her life. Not that he had told her much about his own concerns. On the contrary, after complimenting her on the subject of David's collar and David's bath, he had got her talking about herself; and she had told him about Willie, and about Atchison, and about her desire to go home to New England.

"My sakes!" said she to herself; "what a chatterbox I'm getting to be in my old age! What must he have thought of me?" But in her heart she knew he had not thought any harm of her confidence. There had been no mistaking the sympathy in that sunburnt face, and if there had been any doubt remaining, the hearty grip of the rough hand, which she still

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 felt upon her palm, would have set her mind quite at rest.

But if Mrs. Nancy wondered at herself on Tuesday, she had fairly lost all track of her own identity when, on Sunday, she found herself seated beside her broad-shouldered friend in a light wagon, bowling over the prairies behind a pair of frisky four-year-olds, while David bounded beside them or scampered about in the vain pursuit of prairie-dogs.

"Do you feel afraid?" asked her host, looking protectingly down upon the tiny figure at his side.

"Not a mite," she declared. "I never was one of the scary kind."

They had left the mountains behind them and were speeding to the eastward. It seemed to her that a few hours of this rapid progress would bring them to the very shores of the Atlantic. On and on they went over the undulating yellow plains. As they neared the top of each rise of ground Mrs. Nancy's heart stood still in a strange fantastic suspense. Would there be trees over beyond, or lakes, or rivers, or perhaps a green New England meadow?

"Isn't it like sailing?" said her companion as they bowled along.

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 "I never went sailing," Mrs. Nancy replied. "I've only been out in a boat on the pond, and I think this is pleasanter."

They did little talking on that drive. Mrs. Nancy was too entirely absorbed in her new experience to have much to say. But when at last they reached the ranch, lying like an oasis in the vast barren, with young corn sprouting in the wide fields, and a handful of cottonwood trees clustered about the house, the tears fairly started to the little woman's eyes, so much did this bit of rural landscape remind her of her own far-away New England. And when the master of the house led the way into a neat little room, with a south window looking across the plains, it came his turn for confidences.

"This room was built on for my mother," he said.

"Did she live here with you?"

"No; she died before she could get here."

"Oh dear!" said his little visitor.

The two small words were eloquent with sympathy.

That was a red-letter day for Mrs. Nancy Tarbell. She felt as though she were getting a glimpse of the great West for the first time in all these years. When her host casually

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 informed her that he owned about seven square miles of land and two hundred head of cattle, she gave a little gasp of amazement.

"I always wanted to see a cattle ranch," she said.

"Oh, this is no cattle ranch. It's only a dairy." And he took her about through the many sheds and barns, which were hidden in a hollow a few rods away. Here he showed her his ice-houses, his huge churns, and his mammoth "separator" that went whirling around, dividing the cream from hundreds of gallons of milk in the time it would have taken her to skim a couple of three-pint pans.

"Sakes alive!" she exclaimed again and again, as these wonders were explained to her—"sakes alive! what would our folks say to that?"

"You'll have a great deal to tell them when you go back," said Warren, studying her animated face.

"If I ever go," she said, with a little sigh.

This was after dinner, which had been a savory meal served by a man cook.

"Do you want very much to go?"

"Oh yes! I shall go just as soon as ever Atchison begins to pay again. I hope I

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 haven't any false pride," she added, deprecatingly, "but I can live cheaper here than I should be willing to there, where I've seen better days."

Brave little Mrs. Nancy! It was not indeed false pride that deterred her, but the fear of being a burden to others.

They were sitting in the big living-room, which on this great occasion had been made as neat as her own little parlor. Antlers and other strange trophies ornamented the walls, where also guns and spurs and lassos hung. The little woman did not seem in the least out of place among these warlike objects. She sat in an old leathern chair, her feet on a coyote-skin, looking about her with quick bright motions that made the big fellow think of the shy field creatures that sometimes strayed over his threshold—ground squirrels, rabbits, and the like. David lay curled up close beside her, and half a dozen less-favored dogs looked wistfully in from time to time. Warren was wondering whether she could possibly fit in naturally to the stiff, scant New England life which he had fled away from when a boy. Presently he said:

"Have you any idea how much your house and land are worth?"

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 "Oh yes! We paid ten hundred and fifty dollars for it when the house was new, but it's a good deal out of repair now."

"But you know real estate is pretty high here just now."

Struck by the peculiar emphasis with which he spoke, Mrs. Nancy gave him a startled look. "Why—why—what do you mean?"

"Well, I was talking with a real-estate man about the value of land the other day, and he said you could realize six thousand dollars on your place any day."

"Six—thousand—dollars?"

"Yes, six thousand dollars."

"Why, that's just what we had in Atchison!"

"Well, I guess there's no question but that you could get that for your land to-morrow."

It had indeed been an eventful day, and it was followed by a sleepless night. For years little Mrs. Nancy had had one great wish, and suddenly it was to be fulfilled. She could go home—home to New England, to the village where she was born, to the village where everybody knew her, where they would talk of Willie. Through the hours of the night, which sped fast, she thought and thought of the home-coming. She passed in review all

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 her old neighbors, forgetting for the moment how many would be found missing; she wandered in spirit through the familiar pastures, beneath the green trees, beside the pond at the foot of the hill. Suddenly a strange suggestion intruded itself upon her thoughts. Must it not be "kind o' damp" with all that swamp land so near by, and the great elm-trees so close about the house? Her house no longer, however. It had passed into the hands of strangers—city people, whom she did not know. She wondered where she should live. She should want to be independent, and she should hate to "board out."

But with the alloy of perplexity her radiant visions faded, and she fell asleep. For the first time in all these years the milkman found locked doors. He would not disturb the "little widdy," but when he had left the can upon the back steps he turned away, feeling somewhat aggrieved.

The next morning, after her house was set in order and her marketing done, Mrs. Nancy sat herself down in her porch to darn her stockings. She had formed the habit, for Willie's sake, of doing all the work possible out in the air and sunshine, and she still clung to all the habits that were associated with him.

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 Her weekly darning was a trifling piece of work, for every hole which ventured to make its appearance in those little gray stockings was promptly nipped in the bud.

The water was merrily flowing in the irrigating ditch, a light breeze was rustling in the cotton woods before the door, while the passing seemed particularly brisk. Two small boys went cantering by on one bareback horse; a drove of cattle passed the end of the street two or three rods away, driven by mounted cow-boys; a collection of small children in a donkey cart halted just before her door, not of their own free will, but in obedience to a caprice of the donkey's. They did not hurt Mrs. Nancy's feelings by cudgelling the fat little beast, but sat laughing and whistling and coaxing him until, of his own accord, he put his big flapping ears forward as though they had been sails, and ambled on. There were pretty turnouts to watch, and spirited horses, and Mrs. Nancy found her mind constantly wandering from what she meant should be the subject of her thoughts.

When the postman appeared around the corner he came to her gate and lifted the latch. It was not time for her small bank dividend. The letter must be from her husband's sister

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 in-law, who wrote to her about twice a year. As Mrs. Nancy sat down to read the letter her eyes rested for a moment upon the mountains.

"If Almira could have come with the letter she'd have thought those snowy peaks well worth the journey," she said to herself. And then she read the letter.

Here it is:

",—Excuse my long silence, but I've been suffering from rheumatism dreadfully, and haven't had the spirit to write to anybody but my Almira. It's been so kind of lonesome since she went away that I guess that's why the rheumatism got such a hold of me. When you ain't got anybody belonging to you, you get kind of low-spirited. Then the weather—it's been about as bad as I ever seen it. Not a good hard rain, but a steady drizzle-drozzle day after day. You can't put your foot out of doors without getting your petticoats draggled. But you'll want to hear the news. Cousin Joshua he died last month, and the place was sold to auction. Deacon Stebbins bought it low. He's getting harder-fisted every year. Eliza Stebbins she's pretty far gone with lung trouble, living in that damp old place; but he won't hear to making any change, and she ain't got life enough left to ask for it. Both her boys is off to Boston. Does seem as though you couldn't hold the young folks here with ropes, and I don't know who's going to run the farms and the corner store when we're gone. Going pretty fast we be too. They've

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 been eight deaths in the parish since last Thanksgiving—Mary Jane Evans and me was counting them up last sewing circle. Mr. Williams, the new minister, made out as we'd better find a more cheerful subject; but we told him old Parson Edwards before him had given us to understand that it was profitable and edifying to the spiritual man to dwell on thoughts of death and eternity. They do say that Parson Williams would be glad to get another parish. He's a stirring kind of man, and there ain't overmuch to stir, round here. I sometimes wish I could get away myself. I'd like to go down to Boston and board for a spell, jest to see somebody passing by; but they say board's high down there and living's poor; and, after all, it's about as easy to stick it out here. I don't know though's I wonder that you feel's you do about coming home. 'T ain't what you're used to out West, and I don't suppose you ever feel real easy in your mind from cow-boys and Indians and wild animals. I was reading only yesterday about a grizzly-bear that killed a man right there in the Rocky Mountains, and I'm glad you feel's you do about coming home. I should like to think that you'd be here to close my eyes at the last.

"But no more at present. This is quite a letter for me. Your true friend,

".

"P.S.—You remember my old tabby that I set such store by? She died along in March, and I buried her under the sugar-maple side of the barn. The maples didn't do as well this year."

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 "Poor Almira," said the little widow, folding the letter with a sigh; "she's having a real hard time. I do feel for her, I declare."

An hour after, when her new friends Warren and David came to inquire how she had borne the fatigues of her yesterday's drive, they found her sitting with the letter in her hands. There was a bright flush on her cheeks, and a look of perplexity in her blue eyes.

"Fine day, isn't it?" said Warren, while David wagged his tail till it almost touched his ears.

"Yes, it's a very fine day. 'Pears to me Colorado never did look so nice as it does to-day."

"That is because you are thinking of leaving us," Warren rejoined, thoughtfully pulling the ears of David, who could scarcely contain himself for joy at being the object of such a flattering attention.

"I don't know's I should be in such a hurry to go right straight away, even if I could sell my land," said the widow, slipping the letter into her pocket with a guilty air.

They chatted awhile in the bright sunshine, and Warren soon had an inkling of the little woman's state of mind.

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 take a ground-rent on the other half of your land if a desirable party should apply? A rent, say, for five years, with the privilege of purchase at the expiration of the term?"

The long words sounded very technical and business-like, yet rather agreeable too.

"You mean somebody might like to build on my land?"

"That's the idea," said Warren. "Fact is," he went on, after a pause, "I happen to know a nice, steady young fellow who is thinking of getting married. He told me he would be willing to pay $300 and taxes."

"Three hundred dollars!" cried the wondering little land-owner. "Why, I should feel like a rich woman!"

"Well, the land's worth it, and the young man's able to pay."

The air was growing warmer and sweeter every minute, and the water in the irrigating ditch sounded quite jubilant as it raced past the house. Yes, Colorado was a pleasant place to live in, especially with Walter Warren for a neighbor only ten miles away. The ranch did not seem at all far off since that rapid drive across the prairies.

She sat so long silent that her visitor felt he must offer greater inducements. He began

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 pulling David's ears so vigorously that a dog of a less refined perception might have howled remonstrance, and then, while the color deepened in the sunburnt face and an engaging shyness possessed him, Warren said, "Perhaps you'd take more kindly to the arrangement if you knew who the young man was?"

"My dear, are you going to get married?" cried Mrs. Nancy, forgetting alike her perplexities and her dreams of opulence.

"Well, yes, I am; some time next fall. She lives back East; and I thought it would be nice to have a little place in town where we could stay through the off seasons. You'll let us come, won't you?" he cried, with a look of boyish beseeching. "I know you would if you could see Jenny. She's so sweet!"

The momentous visit was over; Warren had had his turn at confidences, and was now striding down the street, with David at his heels.

The little widow stood at the gate, her heart feeling bigger and warmer than for many a long day. Once more she looked down under the row of cotton woods, which had come into full leaf during the past week, looked to where her giant mountain neighbor stood, strong and constant as an old friend.

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 The air seemed clearer, the sunshine brighter, than ever before. The running stream was singing its own gay song, and for once it waked no longing in her breast. As Mrs. Nancy turned to walk up the path, she drew forth Almira's letter, not without a momentary pang of remorse. With the letter in her hand she paused again, and looked and listened as though she would drink in the whole of Colorado at one draught. Suddenly a gleam of roguish wilfulness came into the sweet old face, and speaking half aloud, she murmured,

"I don't know but I'm getting to be a heartless old woman, but—I'm afraid I'd full as lief somebody else closed Almira's eyes for her!"

And with this revolutionary sentiment the faithless little New Englander passed into the house that had at last taken on the dignity and the preciousness of a home.

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IR BRYAN PARKHURST, a young Irish sportsman just over from the old country, was rather disappointed in Colorado; and that was a pity, considering that he had crossed an ocean and half a continent to get there. The climate, to be sure, was beyond praise, and climate is what Colorado is for, as any resident of Springtown will tell you. Nature, too, was very satisfactory. He liked the way the great mass of Rocky Mountains thrust itself up, a mighty barrier against the west, perfectly regardless of scenic conventionalities. There was something refreshingly democratic about the long procession of peaks, seeming to be all of about the same height. In that third week of September not a single one of them all wore the ermine, though their claim to that distinction, measured by their altitude, equalled that of their snow-clad cousins of another hemi-

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 sphere. On the other hand, Sir Bryan pleased himself with fancying that the splashes of golden aspen and crimson sumac on the mountain sides, contrasting with the brilliant, unalterable blue of the sky, had a Star-Spangled-Banner effect—a thing which the British tourist is always delighted to discover.

Truth to tell, it was the people that bothered Sir Bryan. In dress, in manners,—he sometimes feared in morals, they lacked the strong flavor which he had confidently looked for. They did not wear flannel shirts in general society; they did not ask impertinent questions; a whiskey cocktail did not seem to play a necessary part in the ceremony of introduction; the almighty dollar itself did not stalk through every conversation, putting the refinements of life to the blush. In short, Sir Bryan found himself forced to base his regard for his new acquaintances upon such qualities as good breeding, intelligence, and a cordial yet discriminating hospitality,—qualities which he was perfectly familiar with at home.

He sometimes wondered whether the taint of civilization might not already have attached itself to the grizzly bear and the mountain lion, for whose inspiring acquaintance he had ardently pined since boyhood. He was on the

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 eve of going to pay his respects to these worthies in their own mountain fastnesses, and, meanwhile, was getting himself in training by walking great distances with a rifle over his shoulder.

In the course of the last of his extended tramps—for he was due to join that inveterate sportsman, Lord Longshot, at Denver, on the following day,—he found himself passing through a wilderness of loveliness. He had entered what he would have termed, with the genial inaccuracy of his race, a "boundless enclosure," and having crossed a vast, yellowish field, populous with scrawny cattle and self-important prairie-dogs, he was following a well-marked road, which led alluringly up hill. Thousands of scrub-oaks, in every shade of bronze and russet, massed themselves on either hand, and in among them tufts of yellow asters shone, and here and there a belated gilia tossed its feathery plume. Scattered groups of pine trees that scorn the arid plains were lording it over the bolder slopes of the mountain side. The steep road went on its winding way, after the manner of its kind, dipping occasionally to meet a bridge of planks, beneath which flowed a stream of autumn colors. After a while Sir Bryan found the ascent too

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 gradual for his ambition, and, leaving the road to make its way as it would, he pushed upwards through the bushes. Every step brought him nearer the gigantic crags which formed the buttresses of the mountain, and looked wild and impregnable enough to be the haunt of the grizzly himself.

The young man's thoughts were dwelling fondly upon the grizzly of his dreams, when he beheld a sight that sent the blood back to his heart with a rush. Not fifty yards away, in a sunny opening, lay a mass of brownish fur which could belong to nobody but a bear in propria persona. Great Cæsar! Could it be possible? Almost too agitated to breathe, Sir Bryan moved cautiously toward the creature, covering it with his rifle. The bear, with the politeness which appeared to cling to all classes of society in this effetely civilized West, rose up and sat on his haunches, facing his visitor. Sir Bryan fired and the bear tumbled over like a ninepin.

Sir Bryan Parkhurst, as became a young Irish baronet, had enjoyed his share of sensations in life. A year previous he had almost broken his neck riding across country, and had won the brush into the bargain. He had once saved a man from drowning on the coast of Corn-

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 wall. He had come into his title unexpectedly, and made his new tenantry adore him. To crown all, he had, at a still poignantly recent date, practically refused the hand of an English heiress. But he had never before shot a bear, nor indeed had he ever seen one outside the Zoo. As he steadfastly regarded the heap of brown fur, a sinister doubt invaded his mind. Might it be a cow, after all? Forgetful of the well-established fact in natural history that cows never sit on their haunches, even with a view to serving as target to an ambitious sportsman, he cautiously approached his victim.

It was unquestionably a bear, though not of a terrific aspect. Sir Bryan examined the lifeless body with the keenest interest. He had seen a domestic pig which would have weighed more; he had encountered more than one dog of a more dangerous appearance; yet, when all was said, a bear was a bear.

Sir Bryan seated himself upon a rock to reflect upon his next step. It was close upon midday. He thought he must be some eight miles from town. When he had enjoyed his bear for a few minutes, he would return there and get some men to come and cart the carcass to town. He would have the skin removed and cured, and the meat—

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 "Brian! Brian Boru!"

The words came ringing up the mountain slope in a bell-like soprano. Why should a bell-like soprano call the name of the old Irish king in this remote wilderness? Was there witchery at work? Was the bear merely a part of the phantasmagoria of an enchanted region?

Sir Bryan, undeterred by these suggestions of his fancy, lifted up his voice and shouted "Hulloo!" and behold! a few minutes later, a horse came pushing through the scrub-oaks, bearing upon his back an enchanted princess. As was to be expected of a Colorado princess, enchanted or otherwise, she had not quite the traditional appearance. In lieu of a flowing robe of spotless white, she was clad in a plain black skirt and a shirt waist of striped cambric, while the golden fillet, if such she wore, was quite concealed by a very jaunty sailor-hat, than which no fillet could have been more becoming. In short, the pleasing vision which Sir Bryan beheld was far more to his taste than any princess of fairy lore could have been. As he sprang to his feet and lifted his hat he wondered whether the expression "nut-brown maid" was poetry. If so, he had performed an unprecedented feat in recalling it so aptly.

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 There is a difference in the way men lift their hats, and Sir Bryan's way was a charming one.

"Did you call?" asked the nut-brown maid.

"No; I only answered when I heard you call my name."

"Is your name Brian Boru?" she inquired, with animation.

"I am an Irishman, and my name is Bryan, so they used to call me Brian Boru."

"How very curious! That is the name of my bear!"

"Of your bear?" he repeated in blank amazement.

"Yes. Have you seen anything of him? I'm a little near-sighted and"

Sir Bryan Parkhurst never shirked a dilemma.

"I've just shot a bear," he blurted out, "but I hope, with all my heart, it wasn't yours!"

"Shot a bear?" cried the girl, in consternation. "Oh! how could you?"

Before Sir Bryan could reach out a helping hand, her feet were on the ground.

"Where is he? Oh! where is he?" she cried in tragic accents.

Sir Bryan pointed to the prostrate form of the murdered bear. Alas! It must have been

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 her bear, for she knelt down beside him, and gazed upon him long and mournfully.

And truly there was something pathetic about the victim, viewed from this new standpoint. He lay on his side, exposing the wound, which was clotted with blood. His small eyes were open, and a red tongue just visible between his parted teeth. One short, rigid, foreleg was stretched out as though in remonstrance, and just within its embrace a fading spray of gilia lifted its fragile blossoms.

Sir Bryan stood lost in contemplation of this singular scene; the graceful figure of the kneeling girl, bending over the mass of coarse brown fur; the flower, standing unscathed close beside the long, destructive claws. A few yards away, the horse lazily whisked his tail, while to the right the frowning crags rose, so near and steep that they seemed about to topple over and make an end of the improbable situation.

At last the girl lifted her head, murmuring, "Straight through the heart!"

The sportsman's vanity gave a little throb. It was a pretty shot, by Jove! He moved nearer.

"I'm no end sorry about it," he declared.

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 Alas, for that throb of vanity! His contrition did not have the true ring.

The girl turned upon him with quick distrust. No, he was more glad than sorry.

"If we were in England," she cried, with withering scorn, "you would have to be more than sorry."

"In England?"

"Yes, in England, or in Ireland, or anywhere round there. If I'd shot so much as a miserable pheasant on your land you'd have—you'd have had me up before the bailey!"

Clearly the girl's reading of English fiction had confused her ideas of British magistracy. But Sir Bryan was generous, and overlooked side issues.

"Is this your land?" he asked, gazing at the wild mountain side, and then at the flaming cheeks of the girl. She stood there like an animated bit of autumn coloring.

"Of course it's my land," she declared.

"But I didn't know it was your land."

"You knew it wasn't yours!" she cried vehemently.

Poor Sir Bryan was hopelessly bewildered. The great West was, after all, not quite like the rest of the world, if charming young ladies owned the mountain sides, danced attendance

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 upon by bears of dangerous aspect and polished manners. He blushed violently, but he did not look in the least awkward.

"I wish you would tell me your name," he said, feeling that if this remarkable young lady possessed anything so commonplace as a name, the knowledge of it might place him on a more equal footing with her.

"Certainly, Mr. Bryan," she replied. "My name is Merriman; Kathleen Merriman," and she looked at him with great dignity but with no relenting.

"Well, Miss Merriman, I don't suppose there's any good in talking about it. My being awfully sorry doesn't help matters any. I don't see that there's anything to be done about it, but to have the carcass carted off your land as soon as may be."

"Carted off my land!" the girl cried, with kindling indignation. "You need not trouble yourself to do anything of the kind." Then, with a sudden change to the elegiac, she fixed her mournful gaze upon her departed friend and said, "I shall bury him where he lies!"

In this softened mood she seemed less formidable, and Sir Bryan so far plucked up his spirit as to make a suggestion.

"Perhaps I could help you," he said. "If

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 I had a shovel, or something, I think I could dig a first-rate grave."

The fair mourner looked at him doubtfully, and then she looked at his namesake, and apparently the poetic justice of the thing appealed to her.

"There's a spade over at the house," she said, "and I don't know that it's any more than fair that you should bury him."

Sir Bryan's spirits rose still higher at the hope of partial expiation of his crime; but with his rising spirits came a premonition of a good healthy appetite which would soon be due, and he asked meekly: "Would you mind, then, if I were to go back to town first, to get something to eat? A person doesn't dig so well, I suppose, on an empty stomach."

"No, you'd better stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before," she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, "and you don't know what a piece of work it's going to be."

They started to push their way through the scrub-oaks.

"Shall I lead your horse for you?" Sir Bryan asked.

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 "No, thank you. Comrag will follow, all right;" and Comrag did follow, so close upon their heels, that Sir Bryan was in momentary expectation of being trampled upon.

Comrag was an unbeautiful beast, and he permitted himself startling liberties; crowding himself in between his mistress and her companion, helping himself without ceremony to a bunch of asters which Sir Bryan had in his hand, and neighing straight into the young baronet's ear as they came in sight of the house.

The "house" was a mere hut, painted red, entirely dwarfed by an ungainly chimney of rough stone. The little hut was built against a huge boulder, which towered above the chimney itself, and looked as though it had stood there since the foundation of the earth. There was a rustic veranda along the front of this diminutive dwelling, which stood on a slight eminence; and, as Sir Bryan stepped upon the veranda, he drew a long breath of amazement and delight. Looking down over the broad, oak-clad slope of the mountain, he beheld the vast sea of the prairie, stretching for leagues upon leagues away to the low horizon. From that height the view seemed limitless, and the illusion of the sea, which

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 always hovers over the prairies, was complete.

As his hostess came out with a long-handled spade in her hand, he cried, "That is the most magnificent thing I ever saw!"

She did not answer immediately, but stood leaning upon the spade, and gazing forth as intently as if it had been to her too a revelation.

Then she drew a long breath and said, in a rapt tone, as though the words came to her one by one: "Yes, it makes you feel sometimes as if your soul would get away from you."

They stood there for a while, watching the cloud-shadows swimming upon that mystic sea. The smoke of an express train on the horizon seemed fairly to crawl, so great was the distance.

"That looks like the smoke of a steamer," Sir Bryan observed.

"Then you think it seems like the sea, as everybody else does," she answered. "I never saw the sea, myself, but I don't believe it can be finer than this."

There was another pause, and then, with a sudden change of mood, to which she seemed subject, the rapt worshipper turned her thoughts to practical things, saying briskly: "Here's your spade, Mr. Bryan. You had

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 better go and begin, while I get the dinner. I'll fire a shot when it's ready."

Sir Bryan obediently took the spade.

"How am I to find my way to the bear?" he asked.

All about the little clearing was an unbroken wilderness of scrub-oaks, gorgeous but bewildering.

"Why, you can just follow Comrag's tracks," she said, pointing toward the spot where the hoof-prints emerged from the brush. "You'd better leave your rifle here," she added with some asperity, "You might take a fancy to shoot Comrag if he strayed your way."

It was Sir Bryan Parkhurst's first attempt at digging, and he devoutly hoped it might be his last. He thought at first that he should never get his spade inserted into the earth at all, so numerous and exasperating were the hindrances it met with. The hardest and grittiest of stones, tangled roots, and solid cakes of earth, which seemed to cohere by means of some subterranean cement, offered a complicated resistance, which was not what he had expected of Mother Earth. He began to fear that that much bepraised dame was something of a vixen after all.

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 The other Brian lay, meanwhile, in all the dignity and solemnity of funeral state, awaiting burial. As Sir Bryan toiled at his thankless task he found himself becoming strangely impressed. There seemed to be a weird and awesome significance in the scene. He did not know why it was, but the beetling crags above him, the consciousness of the marvellous plains below, the rhythmic murmur of the wind in the pine trees near at hand, the curious impenetrableness of the old earth, the kingship of death asserting itself in the motionless brute which he had killed, but which he was powerless to make alive again—all these weird and unaccustomed influences seemed to be clutching at his imagination, taking liberties with his sense of identity. He had just about reached the conclusion that it was all a mistake about his being anybody in particular, when a shot rang out and reminded him that he was, at any rate, ravenously hungry.

Five minutes later he had washed his hands at the toy sink of a toy kitchen and was seated at a snowy table on the little veranda, partaking of a mutton stew which seemed a dish fit for the gods.

It had been something of a shock to Sir

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 Bryan to find places laid for only two. He had never before enjoyed a tête-à-tête meal with a young lady, and it was some minutes before he could rid his mind of the impression that an irate chaperon was about to appear from behind the boulder, or, for the matter of that, from the depths of the earth itself. His recent experience of the difficulty of penetrating the surface of the earth might have given him a sense of security in that direction, had he not cherished an exaggerated opinion of the prowess of the traditional chaperon in thwarting the pleasures of the young. The comeliness, too, of his hostess led him, by inference, to suppose that the chaperon in question would prove to be of a peculiarly vicious and aggressive type. No such apparition came, however, to disturb his satisfaction, and he gradually came to believe in the lawfulness of the situation. His face may have betrayed something of the questionings which were racking his mind, for the self-possessed Kathleen, after heaping his plate with stew for the second time, gave him an elder-sisterly look, and said: "Mr. Bryan, you are such a very discreet young man, that I believe I will answer all the questions you are dying to ask."

Sir Bryan blushed, as he always hated him-

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 self for doing, and the nut-brown maid continued:

"Yes, I live here all alone. I am taking up a claim. No. Nobody molests me, and I get on beautifully. Sometimes my friends come up and spend a few days with me, but not often. Comrag and I do the marketing once or twice a week. I've got a lovely cool cellar up against the boulder under the house."

All this she said like a child repeating a lesson she has learned by rote, which the teacher wants to hear, but which the child finds rather uninteresting. But Sir Bryan listened as if it had been the most exciting tale he had ever heard. Thus encouraged she proceeded with the dry statement of facts.

"I've only got to stay here a month longer to secure the claim. I've got three hundred acres, and it has cost me just three hundred dollars to take it up and to build my house and Comrag's stall. I could sell out to-morrow for five hundred dollars, but I don't know that I would sell for five thousand. Because I have such a beautiful time here. I feel somehow as if I had struck root."

Sir Bryan knew exactly what she meant. In spite of the sailor hat and shirt waist, she had the air of having grown up among the

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 rocks and glowing oak leaves. He said nothing, but his attentive attitude asked for more.

"Oh, yes! and about Brian Boru," she proceeded. "I found him last June, lying up against a tree with his leg broken. I fed him until his leg was mended, and—and"—with a little catch in her breath—"he adored me! See how green it looks off to the south," she hastened to add, brushing her hand across her eyes.

An hour after dinner, as Sir Bryan still labored at that contumacious grave, his hostess came and seated herself upon the rock, whence he, in the first flush of triumph, had surveyed the dead bear. Sir Bryan could not but feel flattered by this kind attention, and, being particularly anxious to acquit himself creditably before so distinguished a spectator, he naturally became more and more awkward at his work.

The young lady considerately divided her attention between the futile efforts of the amateur grave-digger and the flippant behavior of a black and white magpie, which was perched on the branch of a dead pine near by, derisively jerking its long tail. She wondered whether the magpie perhaps shared her astonishment, that an able-bodied son of Erin should

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 not take more naturally to a spade. She had supposed that, if there was one weapon that an Irishman thoroughly understood, it was that which her new acquaintance was struggling with. She cocked her head on one side, with something of a magpie air, while a little crease appeared between her eyebrows.

"Why don't you coax it a little more?" she suggested.

Sir Bryan straightened himself up and stood there, very red in the face, trying to make out whether she was laughing at him. Then he laughed at himself and said, "I believe you are right. I was getting vindictive."

After that he seemed to get on better.

They buried the bear just as the heavy shadow of the mountain fell across their feet. By the time the last clod of earth had fallen upon the grave, the mountain shadow had found its way a hundred miles across the plains, and a narrow golden rim, like a magic circlet, glimmered on the horizon.

"Do you never feel afraid?" he asked, as they walked back to the house.

"No. I suppose I ought to, but I don't. I was a little disappointed the first summer I was here, because nothing happened. It seemed such a chance. But somehow things don't

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 happen very often. Do you think they do? And now I'm a good deal older and more experienced, and I don't expect adventures. I'm almost twenty-five," she declared, with the pardonable pride of advancing years.

There was that in Sir Bryan's face as well as in his character which had always invited confidence. Consequently it did not seem to him in the least degree unnatural that this charming girl should tell him about herself, as they walked side by side along the lonely mountain slope, in the fading light.

"I forgot to tell you," she was saying, "that I am a trained nurse. I came out West from Iowa with a sick lady who died very soon, and I liked the mountains, and so I stayed."

"And you've given up nursing?"

"Oh, no. In the winter season I am always busy. I couldn't afford to give up nursing, and I don't believe I should want to. It's lovely to help people when they are suffering. You get almost to feel as though they belonged to you, and I haven't anybody belonging to me."

All this was said in a tone of soliloquy, without a trace of self-consciousness. Miss Kathleen Merriman seemed to find it quite natural

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 that she should stand alone and unprotected in the world. But somehow it conflicted with all Sir Bryan's articles of faith. Women were intended to be taken care of, especially young and pretty women. A feeling of genuine tenderness came over him and a longing to protect this brave young creature. There was, to be sure, something about the way her head was set upon her shoulders, that made him doubt whether it would be easy to acquire the right to take care of her. But that made the task all the more tempting. The old song that every Irishman loves was in his thoughts. He felt an impulse, such as others had felt in this young lady's presence, to whisper: "Kathleen Mavourneen." He tried to fancy the consequences of such a bold step, but he did not venture to face them. He therefore contented himself with observing that the air had grown very chilly.

They had reached the little veranda once more, and Sir Bryan was not invited to tarry. The girl stood there in the deepening twilight, a step above him, leaning upon the spade he had delivered up, and looking out across the shadowy plains, and Sir Bryan could think of no possible excuse for staying any longer. As he flung his rifle over his shoulder and made a

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 motion to go, she held out her hand, with a sudden friendly impulse, and said: "I was very unjust this morning. You couldn't possibly have known, and it was very kind of you to bury him."

Sir Bryan murmured a remorseful word or two, and then he started down the mountain side.

"Good-bye," he cried, across the scrub-oaks that were growing dark and indistinct.

"Good-bye, Mr. Bryan," came the answer, sounding shrill and near through the intervening distance.

As he looked back, a huge, ungainly form thrust itself before the slender figure. A great dark head stood out against the light shirtwaist the girl wore, and he perceived that Comrag had strolled from his stall for a friendly good-night.

"The only friend she has left now," Sir Bryan reflected in sorrowful compunction.

He strode down the mountain at a good pace. Now and then a startled rabbit crossed his path, and once his imagination turned a scrub-oak into the semblance of a bear. But he gave no heed to these apparitions. His sportsman's instinct had suffered a check.

By the time Sir Bryan had reached the out-

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 skirts of the town, the stars were out. He looked up at the great mountain giant that closed the range at the south. Wrapped in darkness and in silence it stood against the starry sky. He tried to imagine that he could perceive a twinkling light from the little cabin, but none was visible. The enchantment of the mountain-side had already withdrawn itself into impregnable shadow.

"Jove!" he said to himself, as he turned into the prosaic town. "If I were an American, or something of that sort, I'd go up there again."

Being, however, a young Irish baronet, as shy of entanglements with his own kind as he was eager for encounters with wild beasts, he very wisely went his way the next morning, and up to this time has never beheld mountain or maiden again.

Over the grave which Sir Bryan dug, there stands to-day a stout pine board, upon which may be read the following legend:

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 Every year, however, the inscription becomes somewhat less legible and it is to be feared that all record of the poor bear will soon be lost.

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ACOB STANWOOD was not the only college-bred man, stranded more or less like a disabled hull, upon the prairie sea of Colorado. Within the radius of a hundred miles—no great distance as prairie miles are reckoned,—there were known to be some half dozen of the fraternity, putting their superior equipment to the test, opposing trained minds and muscles to the stubborn resistance of an ungenial nature. The varying result of the struggle in different cases would seem to indicate that it is moral fibre which nature respects and submits to, rather than any acquired advantages.

In Jacob Stanwood's case there was no such test applied, for there was absolutely no struggle. He would have found it much easier to send a bullet through his brain than to put that organ to any violent exertion. Up

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 to him, but he sometimes fancied that he saw it coming. At such times he would philosophize over himself and fate, until he had exhausted those two great subjects, and then, in a quiet and gentlemanly way, he would drown speculation in the traditional dram. He never drank anything but "Old Rye," and he flattered himself that he did so only when he pleased. If he somewhat misapprehended his relation with old rye, it was perhaps no wonder; for in his semi-occasional encounters with this gentlemanly intoxicant, his only witnesses and commentators were his collie dogs, and they never ventured upon an opinion in the matter.

When he was in a good mood Stanwood would sit in his doorway of a summer evening, with the collies at his feet, and commune with nature as amicably as if she had been his best friend. Between his cabin door and "the range" stretched twenty miles of arid prairie; but when the sun was in the west, the wide expanse took on all the mystic hues that the Orientals love and seek to imitate, and he gazed across it to the towering peaks with a sense of ownership which no paternal acres, no velvet lawns, nor stately trees, could have

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 awakened in him. A row of telegraph-poles, which had doubtless once been trees, straggled along the line of the railroad, a few miles to the north, and his own windmill indicated the presence of water underground. But as far as the eye could reach not a living tree could be seen, not a glimmer of a lake or rivulet; only the palpitating plain and the soaring peaks, and at his feet the cluster of faithful friends, gazing, from time to time, with rapt devotion into his face.

On these meditative evenings Stanwood found a leisurely companionship in reminiscences of better days; reminiscences more varied and brilliant than most men have for solace. But it was part of his philosophy never to dwell on painful contrasts. Even in the memory of his wife, whom he had adored and lost, even into that memory he allowed no poignant element to enter. He thought of her strong and gay and happy, making a joy of life. He never permitted the recollection of her illness and death, nor of his own grief, to intrude itself. Indeed he had succeeded in reality, as well as in retrospect, in evading his grief. There had been a little daughter of six, who had formed part of the painful association which his temperament rebelled

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 against. Foregoing, in her favor, the life-interest in her mother's estate to which he was entitled, he had placed the child under the guardianship of an uncle whom he equally disliked and trusted, and, having thus disposed of his last responsibility, he had gone forth into what proved to be the very diverting world of Europe. The havoc which some ten years' sojourn wrought in his very considerable fortune would force one to the conclusion that he had amused himself with gambling; but whether in stocks, or at faro tables, or in some more subtle wise, was known only to himself.

He had returned to his own country by way of Japan and San Francisco, and then he had set his face to the East, with an idea that he must repair his shattered fortunes. When once the Rocky Mountains were crossed, however, and no longer stood as a bulwark between him and unpleasant realities, he suddenly concluded to go no farther. It struck him that he was hardly prepared for the hand-to-hand struggle with fortune which he had supposed himself destined to; it would be more in his line to take up a claim and live there as master, though it were only master of a desert.

The little daughter, with whom he kept up

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 a desultory correspondence, had expressed her regret in a letter written in the stiff, carefully worded style of "sweet sixteen," and he had never guessed the passion of disappointment which the prim little letter concealed.

This had happened five years ago. He had taken up his claim successfully, but there success ended. After four years or more of rather futile "ranching," he sold most of his stock to his men, who promptly departed with it, and proceeded to locate a claim a few miles distant. The incident amused him as illustrating the dignity of labor, and kindred philosophical theories which the present age seems invented to establish.

One horse, a couple of cows, and his six collie dogs of assorted ages and sizes, he still retained, and with their assistance he was rapidly making away with the few hundreds accruing from the sale of his stock and farming implements. He had placed the money in the bank at Cameron City, a small railroad-station in a hollow five miles north of him, and it was when his eyes fell upon the rapidly diminishing monthly balance that he thought he saw coming that unpleasant alternative of which mention has been made.

He found no little entertainment, after the

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 departure of his men, in converting their late sleeping-apartment into what he was pleased to call a "museum." To this end nothing further was necessary, after removing all traces of their late occupancy, than that two old sole-leather trunks should render up their contents, consisting of half-forgotten souvenirs of travel. The change was magic. Unmounted photographs appeared upon the wall, an ivory Faust and Gretchen from Nuremberg stood, self-centred and unobservant, upon the chimney-shelf among trophies from Turkey, and Japan, Spain, and Norway. A gorgeous kimono served as curtain at the south window, a Persian altar-cloth at the west; and through the west window, the great Peak gazed with stolid indifference upon all that splendor, while the generous Colorado sunshine poured itself in at the south in unstinted measure, just as lavishly as if its one mission had been to illuminate the already gorgeous display.

And then, when all was done, Stanwood found to his surprise, that he still liked best to sit at his cabin-door, and watch the play of light on peak and prairie.

Late one afternoon, as he sat in the doorway, at peace with himself, and in agreeable harmony with the world as he beheld it, his

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 eye was caught by an indistinguishable object moving across the plain from the direction of Cameron City. He regarded it as he might have regarded the progress of a coyote or prairie-dog, till it stopped at his own gate, half a mile to the northward. A vague feeling of dissatisfaction came over him at the sight, but he did not disturb himself, nor make any remarks to the dogs on the subject. They however soon pricked up their ears, and sprang to their feet, excited and pleased. They were hospitable souls and welcomed the diversion of a visitor. As the wagon drew nearer, Stanwood observed that there was a woman sitting beside the driver; whereupon he repaired to his own room to give himself a hasty polish. The dogs began to bark in a friendly manner, and, under cover of their noise, the wagon came up and stopped before the door. Suddenly a rap resounded, and in acknowledgment of this unusual ceremony, the master of the house went so far as to pull on his best coat before stepping out into the main room. There in the doorway, cutting off the view of the Peak, stood a tall, well-dressed young woman, patting one of the dogs, while the others leaped, barking, about her.

Somewhat mystified by this apparition, Stan-

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 wood approached, and said; "Good-evening, madam."

"Good-evening," came the reply, in a rather agitated voice. "I'm Elizabeth."

"The deuce you are!"

Struck, not by the unfatherly, but by the ungentlemanly nature of his response, Stanwood promptly gathered himself together, to meet the situation.

"Pray come in and take a seat," he said; and then, falling into the prairie speech: "Where are you stopping?"

The tall young lady, who had entered, but who had not taken the proffered seat, looked at him a moment, and then she came toward him with a swift, impulsive movement, and said: "Why, papa, I don't believe you know me! I'm Elizabeth!"

"Yes, yes, oh, yes! I understand. But I thought perhaps you were paying a visit somewhere—some school friend, you know, or—or—yes—some school friend."

The girl was looking at him half bewildered, half solicitous. It was not the reception she had anticipated at the end of her two-thousand-mile journey. But then, this was not the man she had expected to see—this gaunt, ill-clad figure, with the worn, hollow-eyed face,

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 and the gray hair. Why, her father was only fifty years old, yet the lines she saw were lines of age and suffering. Suddenly all her feeling of perplexity and chagrin and wounded pride was merged in a profound tenderness. She drew nearer, extending both her hands, placed them gently upon his shoulders and said: "Will you please to give me a kiss?"

Stanwood, much abashed, bent his head toward the blooming young face, and imprinted a perfunctory kiss upon the waiting lips. This unaccustomed exercise completed his discomfiture. For the first time in his life he felt himself unequal to a social emergency.

A curious sensation went over Elizabeth. Somehow she felt as if she had been kissed by a total stranger. She drew back and picked up her small belongings. For a moment Stanwood thought she was going.

"Don't you get your mail out here any more?" she asked.

"Not very regularly," he replied, guiltily conscious of possessing two or three illegible letters from his daughter which he had not yet had the enterprise to decipher.

"Then you did not expect me?"

"Well, no, I can't say I did. But"—with a praiseworthy if not altogether successful

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 effort—"I am very glad to see you, my dear."

The first half of this speech was so much more convincing than the last, that the girl felt an unpleasant stricture about her throat, and knew herself to be on the verge of tears.

"I could go back," she said, with a pathetic little air of dignity. "Perhaps you would not have any place to put me if I should stay."

"Oh, yes; I can put you in the museum"—and he looked at her with the first glimmer of appreciation, feeling that she would be a creditable addition to his collection of curiosities.

Elizabeth met his look with one of quick comprehension, and then she broke into a laugh which saved the day. It was a pleasant laugh in itself, and furthermore, if she had not laughed just at that juncture she would surely have disgraced herself forever by a burst of tears.

Cy Willows, meanwhile, believing that "the gal and her pa" would rather not be observed at their first meeting, had discreetly busied himself with the two neat trunks which his passenger had brought.

"Hullo, Jake!" he remarked, as the ranchman appeared at the door; "this is a great day for you, ain't it?"

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 The two men took hold of one of the trunks together, and carried it into the museum. When the door opened, Willows almost dropped his end from sheer amazement. He stood in the middle of the room, staring from Venus to altar-cloth, from altar-cloth to censer.

"Gosh!" he remarked at last. "Your gal's struck it rich!"

The "gal" took it more quietly. To her, the master of this fine apartment was not Jake Stanwood, the needy ranchman, but Jacob Stanwood, Esq., gentleman and scholar, to the manor born. She stepped to the window, and looked out across the shimmering plain to the rugged peaks and the warm blue slopes of "the range," and a sigh of admiration escaped her.

"Oh, papa!" she cried, "how beautiful it is!"

"And I'll be durned if 't wa'n't the mountings the gal was looking at all the time!" Cy Willows declared, when reporting upon the astonishing situation at the ranch.

Stanwood himself was somewhat impressed by the girl's attitude. The museum had come to seem to his long unaccustomed mind a very splendid apartment indeed. When, a few minutes later, Elizabeth joined him in the rudely

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 furnished living-room of the cabin, he felt something very like chagrin at her first observation.

"Oh, papa!" she cried. "I'm so glad the rest of it is a real ranch house! I've always wanted to see just how a real ranchman lives!"

He thought ruefully that she would soon learn, to her cost, how a very poverty-stricken ranchman lived. His examination of the larder had not been encouraging.

"I am afraid we shall have rather poor pickings for supper, my dear," he said apologetically. He called her "my dear" from the first; it seemed more non-committal and impersonal than the use of her name. He had not called a young lady by her first name for fifteen years.

"I have my dinner in the middle of the day," he went on, "and I seem to have run short of provisions this evening."

"I suppose you have a man-cook," she remarked, quite ignoring his apology.

"Yes," he replied grimly. "I have the honor to fill that office myself."

"Why; isn't there anybody else about the place?"

"No. I'm 'out of help' just now, as old

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 Madam Gallup used to say. I don't suppose you remember old Madam Gallup."

"Oh, yes, I do! Mama used to have her to dinner every Sunday. She looked like a duchess, but when she died people said she died of starvation. That was the year after you went away," she added thoughtfully.

It seemed very odd to hear this tall young woman say "mama," and to realize that it was that other Elizabeth that she was laying claim to. Why, the girl seemed almost as much of a woman as her mother. Fifteen years! A long time to be sure. He ought to have known better than to have slipped into reminiscences at the very outset. Uncomfortable things, always—uncomfortable things!

He would not let her help him get the supper, and with a subtle perception of the irritation which he was at such pains to conceal, she forbore to press the point, and went, instead, and sat in the doorway, looking dreamily across the prairie.

Stanwood noted her choice of a seat, with a curious mixture of jealousy and satisfaction. He should be obliged either to give up his seat, or to share it for awhile; but then it was gratifying to know that the girl had a heart for that view.

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 And the girl sat there wondering vaguely why she was not homesick. Everything had been different from her anticipations. No one to meet her at Springtown; no letter, no message at the hotel. She had had some difficulty in learning how to reach Cameron City, and when, at last, she had found herself in the forlorn little prairie train, steaming eastward across the strange yellow expanse, unbroken by the smallest landmark, she had been assailed by strange doubts and questionings. At Cameron City, again, no longed-for, familiar face had appeared among the loungers at the station, and the situation and her part in it seemed most uncomfortable. When, however, she had made known her identity, and word was passed that this was "Jake Stanwood's gal," there were prompt offers of help, and she had soon secured the services of Cy Willows and his "team."

As she sat in the doorway, watching the glowing light, the sun dropped behind the Peak. She remembered how Cy had said he "hadn't never heard Jake Stanwood speak of havin' a gal of his own." The shadow of the great mountain had fallen upon the plain, and a chill, half imaginary, half real, possessed itself of her. Was she homesick after all? She stood up and stepped out upon the prairie,

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 which had never yielded an inch of space before the cabin door. Off to the southward was a field of half-grown alfalfa that had taken on a weird, uncanny green in the first sunless light. She looked across to the remote prairie, and there, on the far horizon, the sunlight still shone, a golden circlet. No. She was not homesick; anything but that! She had been homesick almost ever since she could remember, but now she was in her father's house and everything must be well.

When Stanwood came to look for her he found her surrounded by the assiduous collies, examining with much interest the tall, ungainly windmill, with its broad wooden flaps.

On the whole, their first evening together was a pleasant one. Stanwood listened with amused appreciation to the account of her journey. She would be a credit to his name, he thought, out there in the old familiar world which he should never see again.

He had relinquished to her the seat on the door-step, and himself sat on a saw-horse outside the door, where the lamp-light struck his face. Her head and figure presented themselves to him as a silhouette, and somehow that suited him better than to see her features distinctly; it seemed to keep their relation back

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 where it had always been, a sort of impersonal outline.

Elizabeth, for her part, thought that, for all his shabby clothes and thin, sunburnt face, her father was more manifestly a gentleman than any man she had ever seen.

She learned several things in the course of that conversation. She found that when she touched upon her reasons for coming to him, her feeling that they were only two and that they ought to be together, his eyes wandered and he looked bored; when she spoke of her mother he seemed uncomfortable.

Was she like her mother? No, he said, she was not in the least like her mother; he did not see that she took after anybody in particular. Then, as if to escape the subject, was her Uncle Nicholas as rabid a teetotaller as ever?

He liked best to hear about her school days and of the gay doings of the past year, her first year of "society."

"And you don't like society?" he asked at last, with a quizzical glance at her pretty profile. She had turned her eyes from the contemplation of his face, and seemed to be conjuring up interesting visions out of the darkness.

"Yes, I do!" she said with decision.

"You won't get much society out here," he

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 remarked, and his spirits rose again. Of course she would be bored to death without it.

"I like some things better than society," she replied.

"For instance?"

She turned her face full upon him, and boldly said, "You."

"The deuce you do!" he cried, and was instantly conscious that it was the second time that he had forgotten himself.

A little crinkle appeared in the silhouette of a cheek, and she said, "I do like to hear you say 'the deuce.' I don't believe Uncle Nicholas ever said 'the deuce' in his life."

"Nick was always a bore," Stanwood rejoined, more pleased with the implied disparagement of his pet aversion than with the very out-spoken compliment to himself.

"I think Uncle Nicholas has done his duty by me," Elizabeth remarked demurely, "but I am glad he has got through. I came of age last Monday, the day I started for Colorado."

"When did you decide to come?"

"About five years ago. I always meant to start on the 7th of June of this year."

"You make your plans a long way ahead. What is the next step on the program?"

"I haven't the least idea."

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 "For such a very decided young lady, isn't that rather odd?"

"There are some things one can't decide all by one's self."

"Such as?"

"The next step."

"Perhaps you will find it easier after a week or two of ranching."

"You don't think I am going to like ranching?"

"Hardly."

"Don't you like it?"

"Oh, I'm an old man, with my life behind me."

The lamp-light on his face was stronger than he was aware; Elizabeth saw a good deal in it which he was not in the habit of displaying to his fellow-creatures. She stooped, and patted one of the collies, and told him she thought she really ought to go to bed; upon which Stanwood rose with alacrity, and conducted her to the museum, which had been turned into a very habitable sleeping-room.

Having closed the door upon his latest "curiosity," Stanwood proceeded to perform a solemn rite in the light of the stars. He took his demijohn of old rye, and, followed by the six collies, he carried it out a few rods back of the

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 cabin, where he gravely emptied its contents upon the sandy soil. At the first remonstrating gulp of the demijohn, which seemed to be doing its best to arrest the flow, a strong penetrating aroma assailed his nostrils, but he never flinched. Great as his confidence was in his own supremacy in his peculiarly intimate relations with old rye, he did not wish to "take any chances" with himself.

The dogs stood around in an admiring circle, and sniffed perplexedly at the strange libation which was clearly not intended for their kind. Did they realize that it was poured before the altar of parental devotion? They stood there wagging their tails with great vigor, and never taking their eyes off their master's countenance. Perhaps they appreciated the odd, half-deprecating, half-satirical expression of the face they knew so well. It would have been a pity if somebody had not done so. It is to be feared, however, that the remark with which Stanwood finally turned away from the odorous pool and walked toward the house was beyond the comprehension of the canine intellect. To himself, at least, the remorseful pang was very real with which he said, half aloud, "Pity to waste good liquor like that! Some poor wretch might have enjoyed it."

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 The morning following his visitor's arrival, the two drove together in the rattling old ranch wagon to Cameron City. Elizabeth was enchanted with the ingenious introduction of odd bits of rope into the harness, by means of which the whole establishment was kept from falling apart. She thought the gait of the lazy old nag the most amusing exhibition possible, and as for the erratic jolts and groans of the wagon, it struck her that this was a new form of exercise, the pleasurable excitement and unexpectedness of which surpassed all former experiences. At Cameron City she made purchase of a saddle-horse, a very well-made bronco with dramatic possibilities in his eye.

"I don't know where you will get a side-saddle," Stanwood had demurred when the purchase was first proposed.

"A side-saddle? I have it in my trunk."

"You don't say so! I should think it would jam your bonnets."

"Oh, I packed it with my ranch outfit."

So they jogged and rattled over to Cameron City, where Elizabeth had made the acquisition, not only of a saddle-horse, but of two or three most interesting new acquaintances.

"I do like the people so much, papa," she

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 declared as they drove out of town, having left the new horse to be shod.

"You don't mind their calling you 'Jake Stanwood's gal'?"

"No, indeed! I think it's perfectly lovely!"

"It cannot but be gratifying to me," Stanwood remarked, in the half-satirical tone he found easiest in conversation with this near relative; "in fact, I may say it is gratifying to me, to find that the impression is mutually favorable. Halstead, the ruffianly looking sheep-raiser who called you 'Madam,' confided to me that you were the first woman he had ever met who knew the difference between a horse and a cow; and Simmons, the light-haired man who looks like a deacon, but who is probably the worst thief in four counties, told me I ought to be proud of 'that gal'!"

"Oh, papa, what gorgeous compliments! Don't you want a swap?"

"A what?"

"A swap. That's what we call it when we pay back one compliment with another."

He turned and looked at her with an amused approval which was almost paternal.

"It is most refreshing," he said, "to have the vocabulary of the effete West enlivened with these breezy expressions from the growing East."

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 "But, papa, you must really like slang, now really! Uncle Nicholas could never tolerate it."

"There you strike a chord! I desire you to speak nothing but slang if Nick objects."

Agreeable badinage had always been a favorite pastime with Jacob Stanwood. If Elizabeth had but guessed it, a taste of it was worth more to him than all the filial devotion she held in reserve.

"And now for the swap," she said. "You are not modest, I hope?"

"Heaven forbid!"

"Well, then! Miss Hunniman—you remember Miss Hunniman? She used to make mama's dresses, and now she makes mine. She told me only a year ago that whenever she read about Sir Galahad or the Chevalier Bayard or Richard the Lion-hearted, she always thought of you; which was very inconvenient, because it made her mix them up, and she never could remember which of them went to the Crusades and which of them did not!"

Anything in the nature of a reminiscence was sure to jar upon Stanwood. He preferred to consider the charming young person beside him as an agreeable episode; he half resented any reminder of the permanence of their rela-

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 tion. Therefore, in response to this little confidence, which caused the quaint figure of Miss Hunniman to present itself with a hundred small, thronging associations of the past, he only remarked drily:

"I suppose you know that if you stay out here any length of time you will spoil your complexion."

Elizabeth was impressionable enough to feel the full significance of such hints and side-thrusts as were cautiously administered to her. She was quite aware that she and her father were totally at odds on the main point at issue, that he had as yet no intention of sharing his solitude with her for any length of time. As the days went by she perceived something else. She was not long in discovering that he was extremely poor, and she became aware in some indefinable wise that he held existence very cheap. Had her penetration been guided by a form of experience which she happily lacked, she might have suspected still another factor in the situation which had an unacknowledged influence upon Stanwood's attitude.

Meanwhile their relation continued to be a friendly one. They were, in fact, peculiarly congenial, and they could not well live together without discovering it.

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 They rode together, they cooked together, they set up a target, and had famous shooting-matches. Elizabeth learned to milk the cows and make butter, to saddle her bronco and mount him from the ground. They taught the pups tricks, they tamed a family of prairie-dogs, they had a plan for painting the windmill. By the end of a week Stanwood was in such good humor, that he made a marked concession.

One of the glowing, glimmering sunsets they both delighted in was going on, beautifying the prairie as warmly as the sky. Stanwood came from the shed where he had been feeding the horses, and found his visitor seated in the doorway. He stood observing her critically for a few moments. She made an attractive picture there in the warm sunset light. Before he could check himself he found himself wishing that her mother could see her. Ah! If her mother were here too, it would be almost worth while to begin life over again.

The girl, unconscious of his scrutiny, sat gazing at the view he loved. As he watched her tranquil happy face he felt reconciled and softened. Her hands lay palm downward on her lap. They were shapely hands, large and generous; a good deal tanned and freckled

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 now. There was something about them which he had not noticed before; and almost involuntarily his thoughts got themselves spoken.

"Do you know, Elizabeth, your thumbs are like your mother's!"

Elizabeth felt that it was a concession, but she had learned wisdom. She did not turn her eyes from the range, and she only said quietly, "I am glad of that, papa."

Emboldened by the consciousness of her own discretion, she ventured, later in the evening, to broach a subject fraught with risks. Having armed herself with a piece of embroidery, and placed the lamp between herself and the object of her diplomacy, she remarked in a casual manner:

"I suppose, papa, that Uncle Nicholas has told you how rich we are."

"Nick wrote me with his usual consciousness of virtue that his investments for you had turned out well."

"Our income is twice what it was ten years ago."

"I congratulate you, my dear. I only regret the moral effect upon Nick."

"And I congratulate you, papa. Of course it's really yours as long as you live."

"I think you have been misinformed, my

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 dear. It was your mother's property, and is now yours."

"Oh, no, papa! You have a life-interest in it. I am surprised that you did not know that."

"And I am surprised that you should be, or pretend to be, ignorant that the property stands in your name. I have no more concern in it than—Miss Hunniman."

"But, papa!"

"We won't discuss the matter, if you please, my dear. We can gain nothing by discussion."

"I don't want to discuss it, papa," taking a critical survey of her embroidery; "but if you won't go snacks, I won't. Uncle Nicholas told me never to say 'go snacks, she added, with a side glance around the edge of the lamp-shade.

His face relaxed so far that she ventured to add: "Uncle Nicholas would be furious if we were to go snacks."

Stanwood smiled appreciatively.

"Nothing could be more painful to me than to miss an opportunity of making Nick furious," he said; "but I have not lived fifty years without having learned to immolate myself and my dearest ambitions upon the appropriate altars."

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 After which eloquent summing-up, he turned the conversation into another channel.

It was not long after this that Stanwood found himself experiencing a peculiar depression of spirits, which he positively refused to trace to its true source. He told himself that he wanted his freedom; he was getting tired of Elizabeth; he must send her home. It was nonsense for her to stay any longer, spoiling her complexion and his temper; it was really out of the question to have this thing go on any longer. Having come to which conclusion, it annoyed him very much to find himself enjoying her society. His depression of spirits was intermittent.

One morning, when he found her sitting on the saw-horse, with the new bronco taking his breakfast from a bag she held in her lap, the sun shining full in her clear young face, health and happiness in every line of her figure, a positive thrill of fatherly pride and affection seized him. But the reaction was immediate.

He turned on his heel, disgusted at this refutation of his theories. He was wretched and uncomfortable as he had never been before, and if it was not this intruding presence that made him so, what was it? Of course he was getting tired of her; what could be more nat-

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 ural? For fifteen years he had not known the pressure of a bond. Of course it was irksome to him! He really must get rid of it.

His moodiness did not escape Elizabeth, nor did she fail to note the recent accentuating of those lines in his face, which had at first struck her painfully, but which she had gradually become accustomed to. In her own mind she concluded that her father had lived too long at this high altitude, and that she must persuade him to leave it.

"Papa," she said, as they stood for a moment in the doorway after supper, "don't you think it would be good fun to go abroad this autumn?"

His drooping spirit revived; she was getting tired of ranching.

"A capital plan, my dear. Just what you need," he replied, with more animation than he had shown since morning.

"Let us start pretty soon," she went on persuasively, deceived by his ready acquiescence.

"Us? My dear, what are you thinking of? I'm tired to death of Europe! Nothing would induce me to go."

"Oh, well. Then I don't care anything about it," she said. "We'll stay where we are, of course. I am as happy and contented as I could be anywhere."

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 Stanwood turned upon her with a sudden, fierce irritation.

"This is nonsense!" he cried. "You are not to bury yourself alive out here! I won't permit it! The sooner you go, the better for both of us!"

His voice was harsh and strained; it was the tone of it more than the words themselves that cut her to the heart. He did not want her; it had all been a miserable failure. She controlled herself with a strong effort. Her voice did not tremble; there was only the pathos of repression in it as she answered: "Very well, papa; perhaps I have had my share."

Stanwood thought, and rebelled against the thought, that he had never seen a finer thing than her manner of replying. For himself, he felt as if he had come to the dregs of life and should like to fling the cup away.

They occupied themselves that evening a good deal with the collies, and they parted early; and then it was that Stanwood was brought face to face with himself.

For half an hour or more he made a pretence of reading the papers, and looking at the pictures in a stray magazine, thus keeping himself at arm's length, as it were. But after a while even that restraint became unendurable.

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 He went to the back door of the house and opened it. The collies appeared in a delighted group to rush into the house. He suffered them to do so, and then, stepping out, he closed the door upon them and stood outside. There was a strong north wind, and, for a moment, its breath refreshed him like a dash of cold water. Only for a moment, however. The sense of oppression returned upon him, and he felt powerless to shake it off. With the uncertain, wavering step of a sleep-walker, he moved across to the spot where he had poured his libation three weeks ago. He stood there, strangely fascinated, glancing once or twice, furtively over his shoulder. Then, hardly knowing what he did, he got down on his knees and put his face to the ground. Was it the taste or the smell that he craved? He could not have told. He only knew that he knelt there and pressed his face to the earth, and that a sickening sense of disappointment came over him at finding all trace of it gone.

He got up from his knees, very shaky and weak, and then it was that he looked himself in the face and knew what the ignominious craving meant. He slunk into the house, cowed and shamed. The sight of the dogs, huddled about the door inside, gave him a

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 guilty start, and he drove them angrily out. Then he got himself to bed in the dark. He lay there in the dark, wondering foolishly what Jacob Stanwood would say if he knew what had happened; till, suddenly, he became aware that his mind was wandering, upon which he laughed harshly. Elizabeth heard the laugh, and a vague fear seized upon her. She got up and listened at her door, but the noise was not repeated. Perhaps it was a coyote outside; they sometimes made strange noises.

She went to the window and drew back the Persian altar-cloth. The wind came from the other side of the house; she had been too preoccupied to notice it before. Now it shook the house rudely, and then went howling and roaring across the plains. It was strange to hear it and to feel its force, and yet to see no evidence of it: not a tree to wave its branches, not a cloud to scurry through the sky; only the vast level prairie and the immovable hills, and up above them a sky, liquid and serene, with steady stars shining in its depths, all unconcerned with the raving wind. She felt comforted and strengthened, and when she went back to bed she rested in the sense of comfort. But she did not sleep.

She was hardly aware that she was not

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 sleeping, as the hours passed unmarked, until, in a sudden lull of the wind, a voice struck her ear; a voice speaking rapidly and eagerly. She sprang to her feet. The voice came from her father's room. Had some one lost his way in the night, and had her father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment, and she stood beside him. He was sitting straight up in his bed, talking and gesticulating violently; his eyes glittered in the lamp-light, his face showed haggard and intense.

Elizabeth placed the lamp upon a stand close at hand.

"Papa," she said, "don't you know me? I'm Elizabeth."

He caught at the name.

"You lie!" he cried shrilly. "Elizabeth's dead! I won't have her talked about! She's dead, I say! Hush-sh! Hush-sh! Don't wake her up. Sleep's a good thing—a good thing."

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 On the table where she had placed the lamp was a tiny bottle marked "chloral." There was also a glass of water upset upon the table. Stanwood's clothing and other belongings lay scattered upon the floor. She had never before seen his room disordered. Well! he was ill, and here she was to take care of him.

He was not talking so fast now, but what he said was even more incoherent. The light and the presence of another person in the room seemed to confuse and trouble him. She took his hand and felt the pulse. The hand was hot, and grasped hers convulsively. She put his coat over his shoulders, and then she sat with her arm about him, and gradually he stopped talking, and turned his face to hers with a questioning look.

"What can I do for you, papa? Tell me if there is anything I can do for you."

"Do for me?" he repeated.

"Yes, dear. Is there nothing I can do, nothing I can get for you?"

"Get for me?"

He drew off from her a little, and a crafty look, utterly foreign to the man's nature, came into the tense face.

"I don't suppose you've got a drop of whisky!" he said insinuatingly.

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 The sound of the word upon his own lips seemed to bring the excitement back on him. "Whisky! Yes, that's it! I don't care who knows it! Whisky! Whisky!" He fairly hissed the words.

For the first time since she came into the room Elizabeth was frightened.

"I think you ought to have a doctor," she said.

She felt him lean against her again, and she gently lowered him to the pillow. His head sank back, and he lay there with white lips and closed lids. She knelt beside him, watching his every breath. After a few minutes he opened his eyes. They were dull, but no longer wild.

"Ought you not to have a doctor, papa dear?" she asked.

Intelligence came struggling back into his face.

"No, my dear," he said, gathering himself for a strong effort. "I have had attacks like this before."

"And a stimulant is all you need?"

"All I need," he muttered. His eyes closed, and his breath came even and deep.

Elizabeth knelt there, thankful that he slept. How white his lips were! How spent he

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 looked! He had asked for whisky. Perhaps even in his delirium he knew what he wanted; perhaps a stimulant was all he needed. Of course it was! How stupid not to have understood!

She hurried to her room and got a small brandy-flask that had been given her for the journey. She had emptied it for a sick man on the train.

She went back to her father. He was sleeping heavily. She glanced at his watch lying upon the table beside the chloral bottle. One o'clock! She wondered whether the "store" would be open. She should hate to go to a saloon. But then, that was no matter. If her father needed a stimulant he must have it. She dressed herself quickly, and put her purse and the brandy-flask into her pocket. Then she hurried to the shed, where she saddled the bronco. Her father had once told her that she would have made a first-rate cowboy. Well, now was her chance to prove it.

The collies, who had taken refuge from the wind on the south side of the shed, came trotting in at the open door, and assembled, a curious little shadowy group, about her. But they soon dropped off to sleep, and when she led the bronco out and closed the door upon

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 them, a feeble wag of a tail or two was all the evidence of interest they gave.

She twisted the bridle round a post and slipped into the house for one more look at her patient. He was sleeping profoundly. She placed the lamp upon the floor in a corner, so that the bed was in shadow. Then she came back to the bedside and watched the sleeper again for a moment. She touched his forehead and found it damp and cool. The fever was past. Perhaps he was right; there was no need of a doctor—it was nothing serious. Perhaps the stuff in that little bottle had done something queer to him. A stimulant was all he needed. But he needed that, for his face was pitifully pallid and drawn.

A moment later the bronco was bearing her swiftly through the night, his hoof-falls echoing in a dull rhythm. The wind still came in gusts, blowing straight into her face, but it was warm and pleasant. When she had passed through the gate of the ranch the road went between wire fences, straight north to Cameron City. Now and then a group of horses, roused, perhaps, by her approach, stood with their heads over the fence watching her pass, while the wind stretched their manes and tails out straight to one side. She wished she could

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 stop and make friends with them, but there was no time for that. Her father might wake up and call for her. So on they sped, she and the bronco, waking the cattle on either side of the road, startling more than one prowling coyote, invisible to them, causing more than one prairie-dog, snug in his hole, to fancy it must be morning. And the great night, encompassing the world, gleaming in the heavens, brooding upon the earth, made itself known to her for the first time. Elizabeth never forgot that ride through the beautiful brooding night. Nature seemed larger and deeper and grander to her ever after.

As they came among the houses of the town she reined in the bronco and went quietly, lest she should wake the people. There was a light burning in the room over the store, and the window was open. A woman answered her summons. It was the wife of the storekeeper. Her husband was absent, she said, and she was up with a sick baby. She readily filled the little flask, and was sympathetic and eager to help. Shouldn't she send somebody over to the ranch? There wasn't any doctor in Cameron City, but Cy Willows knew a heap about physic.

No. Elizabeth said her father was better

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 already, only he seemed in need of a stimulant. No, she did not want an escort. The night was lovely, and she wouldn't miss her solitary ride home for anything. She was so glad Mrs. Stiles had the whisky. It would be just what her father needed when he waked up.

And when, some hours later, Jacob Stanwood awoke, he found his daughter sitting beside him in the gray dawn.

"Why, Elizabeth!" he said, "is anything the matter? Did I disturb you?"

She leaned toward him, and laid her hand on his.

"You were ill in the night, papa, and asked for a stimulant, and I got it for you."

"A stimulant?" he repeated vaguely. "What stimulant? Where did you get it?"

"I got it at the store. It's whisky."

"Whisky?" he cried, with a sudden, eager gleam.

Elizabeth was enchanted to find that she had done the right thing.

"Here it is, papa," she said, drawing the flask from her pocket, and pouring a little of the contents into a glass that stood ready.

He watched her with that intense, eager gleam.

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