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 that when the time of its making comes it is found done; it may be asked: is it so by an eternal or a created action? If they say by an eternal action, they admit the existence of a created thing by an eternal action; and if they say by a created action, then there must be a created intention also. They may say that intention is the action itself, but this is impossible. For intention is the only cause oi the action in the intender. If an intender, intending to do an act in a certain time, finds that act quite another than that which he intended, then that act would have come into being without any intender at all. At the same time, if it is thought that from a created intention there can only be a created thing, then as a rule an eternal intention should give an eternal thing, otherwise the result of a created or eternal intention would be the same, which is impossible. All these doubts are found in Islam only through the Mutakallimun, by their explaining things in Law, which


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 Maud?" Louise pressed him. "They'll never forgive you, spurning their help, insulting them this way. You as much as say they stole the cattle when they tried to help you."

"I take it for all they meant it to be," Tom said seriously. "It was different with them, the law hadn't laid a hand on their property and told them to stand off. But if I go on with the cattle I'll be stealin' them. There's no two ways about that, Miss Louise."

"It would be all right for you to go on with them," she insisted, "since they strayed off this way into your hands. Or for all that anybody ever will know, need know, they strayed. Nobody in Texas will ask you how you came to get hold of them, I'll bet you, Tom."

"They'd think it was a pretty smooth trick, I expect," Tom admitted, obliged to grin a little in appreciation of it himself.

"They'd tell you in Texas you did right to drive the cattle on from here."

"I expect likely some of them would," Tom agreed.

"Wouldn't everybody?" she insisted, convinced that she was right.

"I expect most everybody would, Miss Louise."

"Then go on."

"A man's got to begin, and end, standin' right with himself, Miss Louise. There's so many things all along the road that he does, that nobody but his ownself knows anything about. When a man begins to cheat himself he'll turn out the biggest scoundrel that ever was. I told you once I was goin' to wait on the law

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 like a gentleman. That's what I'm bound by honor to do."

"Oh, your honor, your honor!" Louise said, scornfully impatient. "All I hear about is your honor. I'll tell you now, Tom Laylander, you'd be better off without the kind of honor that makes you turn every trick right into the hands of the people that are skinning you. You've got it wrong; it's sentiment, not honor. What you need right now is about three feet of new backbone."

"I expect you're right, Miss Louise."

She turned on him furiously, her face passionately hot.

"Oh, haven't you even got spirit enough to argue?" she cut him. "I'd rather hear you call me a liar, I'd' rather you'd slap me, than go leading along that way like a calf!"

Tom hung his head, the color gone out of his face. He shifted his holster a little, as if it hung uncom fortably; put his hand to his hat and adjusted it, as if everything about him was out of gear.

"You're going to drive them on, aren't you, Tom?" Softly, a little note of cajolery in her tone, a little note of tenderness, as if she had repented her scornfulness and laid a soothing hand on his hurt.

"No, ma'am."

"Won't you do it for me—because I ask you—Tom?"

"There's mighty little I wouldn't do for you, Miss

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Rh received not the love of God, that they might be saved, therefore God shall also send them the operation of error, that they may believe a lie, that they all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but consented to unrighteousness." For when he (Antichrist) is come, and of his own accord concentrates in his own person the apostasy, and accomplishes whatever he shall do according to his own will and choice, sitting also in the temple of God, so that his dupes may adore him as the Christ; wherefore also shall he deservedly "be cast into the lake of fire:" [this will happen according to divine appointment], God by His prescience foreseeing all this, and at the proper time sending such a man, "that they may believe a lie, that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but consented to unrighteousness;" whose coming John has thus described in the Apocalypse: "And the beast which I had seen was like unto a leopard, and his feet as of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon conferred his own power upon him, and his throne, and great might. And one of his heads was as it were slain unto death; and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon because he gave power to the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying. Who is like unto this beast, and who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things, and blasphemy and power was given to him during forty and two months. And he opened his mouth for blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. And power was given him over every tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation. And all who dwell upon the earth worshipped him, [every one] whose name was not written in the book of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any one have ears, let him hear. If any one shall lead into captivity, he shall go into captivity. If any shall slay with the sword, he must be slain with the sword. Here is the endurance and the faith of the saints." After this he likewise describes his armour-bearer, whom he


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 Louise. I'd do anything in the bounds of honor that a man could do, ma'am."

"But you'll not go on to Texas with that herd. Is that what you mean?"

"That's what I mean, Miss Louise."

"Then you can cross me off!"

"Ma'am?" said Tom, starting as if he had been struck.

"I tell you, if that kind of honor means more to you than I do, it's all off between you and me. Do you understand?"

"I hope I don't, Miss Louise."

"What will Cal Withers think of you? What will the sheriff think? What will everybody in McPacken say? They'll all say you're a fool, like they did when you gave up that note. Don't do a fool thing twice, Tom. I tell you again, you can go on to Texas with these cattle, or you can say good-by."

Tom appeared to wilt as if the backbone that Louise had disparaged had suffered a sudden necrosis and crumbled in his skin. He dropped his reins, took hold of the saddle-horn with both hands, clinging as Louise had seen cowboys hold when loaded on their horses in front of the saloon in McPacken.

Tom Laylander was about the sickest looking lad she ever had seen. She did not fully understand until that moment just how much the little chats over their late suppers had done for him. She saw it with exultation, a glow of pride-coming into her face. She was going to save this unsophisticated, old-fashioned boy from him-

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 self. It was between her and that peculiar standard of honor that he had set up for his guide. Let him choose. She did not doubt for a moment as she looked at him sitting there nerveless and white, holding to the saddle like a sick and stricken man, what the decision finally would be. She was saving Tom Laylander from his greatest enemy—himself.

Tom straightened his back presently, sweating from the wrench her cruel condition had given him. He fumbled for the reins like a blind man, drew them taut, lifting them high above the saddle-horn. He lifted his hand to his hat, touching it in respectful salute, faced her for a moment, youth dead in his bright blue eyes.

"Farewell, Miss Louise," he said.

He touched spurs to his horse, giving it rein, and rode away and left her, never turning his head to see whether she laughed or cried.

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OM Laylander rode back to the camp which the two deputy sheriffs had visited to pick up their belongings on their way to McPacken. He found the negro cook hitched up and ready to follow Hank and Perry to town. This man, who enjoyed the euphoniously alliterative name of Russius Ransom, was an old-time range cook, a bony little black man with a wide showing of teeth and a high-pitched voice. He was greatly diverted by the account of the stampede which the two cowboys had given him, too old a hand to be fooled by any such tale.

The surprise of Russius was little less than his evident disappointment and disgust when Laylander came seeking his aid in working the herd back to Kansas.

"My soul, you Texas man! You mean to tell me you didn't steal them cattle yo-self? Go on, boy! Don't lose your nerve when you got 'em safe in the Nation. Go on, go on home."

Russius waved him away with a swimming motion,

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 God had forbidden them to do. For in the Quran it is not said whether intention is created or eternal. So they neither adhere to the exoteric meanings of the Law, which may have given them beatitude and salvation, nor did they attain the degree of certain and exact knowledge, so that they may have had this blessing. Hence they are neither to be counted among the learned nor among the masses, who believe and have strong faith. They are the people "whose hearts are perverse" and "whose hearts are diseased." They say things by their tongues which are quite contrary to those which they believe in their hearts, a cause of which is their tenacity, and love of upholding their opinions at any cost. By a repetition of attitudes like these they become quite devoid of all philosophy, as we see the case of those who are completely accustomed to the Asharite school of thought, and are well pleased with it, even to


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 backing off, refusing to have a hand in any such folly as restoring well-stolen property.

Tom finally convinced him of his mistake, and his determination to have his help whether it suited his notion of proper procedure or not. It was no one-man job getting the scattered herd together and started back across the line. Russius saddled one of his team and went along, protesting that it beat his time, and that he never would have believed any Texas man capable of such enormous folly.

By sunset they had worked the cattle back to the vicinity of the wagon, when Tom dismissed Russius to get supper, himself standing by the cattle until they had settled down for the night.

They were too near the line to suit Laylander; he didn't want them straying over there singly and in bunches, as they were pretty sure to do, still thinking of them as his own. His feeling was that they were simply in pawn, soon to be relieved of their obligation under judgment of the law. He did not consider Cal Withers as a factor in the case at all. If it had stood solely between him and Withers, it would have been settled long ago.

Next day Laylander worked the cattle northward, moving them five or six miles. He had expected the sheriff down to relieve him of his charge long before noon, but neither sheriff nor anybody representing him had appeared at dusk. Tom left the contented cattle to their repose, expecting to be roused during the night

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 by the coming of somebody to relieve him of his responsibility to his personal honor and the law.

Four days passed in this way, Tom edging the herd all the time a little nearer the river and McPacken. The cattle were still in the territory that he had bargained to lease from Cal Withers, but near the northern limit of it now, he believed. There would be danger of getting them mixed with other herds if he pushed them farther. Still the sheriff had not come; nobody had crossed his peaceful way.

Laylander knew that Withers had not learned of the herd's so-called stampede into the Nation, or he would have been down there hot-foot to get them back to Kansas. What Tom could not understand was the absence of the sheriff. He concluded at last that the two deputies had been ashamed to return to town. The sheriff thought they were still standing guard over the cattle, and all was well. Neither the sheriff nor Withers knew anything about the cattle having passed into his hands.

There was but one thing for him to do: go to McPacken and inform the sheriff. He knew that wise and worldly McPacken would laugh at his simplicity, that he would be the joke of cow camps for a hundred miles around. But he never could have gone back to Texas with the cattle, good start on the way that Jim Kelly had made for him in his mistaken generosity. He never could have held up his head among his neighbors, even though many would have admired him and given him credit for a mighty shrewd trick. As for

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 Louise, she had closed the door. It seemed impossible that it ever could be opened again.

It was a time of inactivity in the county seat. The judge of the district court was away on vacation, only the clerk there to represent the judicial machinery until his return. Many of the heads of county offices were out on their ranches or farms; the court house, and the square in which it stood, the most uninteresting place for loafers in the town.

The sheriff was improving this lull in court business to push his campaign for re-election. He was at work in his large bare office, his desk slewed around out of its accustomed place, the incrustations of years on the floor marking the spot where it had stood, to bring it in line of the draft between the windows. There was a pile of mussy mimeographed letters before the sweating official, to which he was signing his name to give them the personal and intimate appeal.

It was a job for the sheriff, this going through twelve or fifteen hundred letters and attaching his name with a flourish at the end. At times he rather enjoyed taking his stub pen between his fingers and putting his signature to subpoenas, attachments, warrants; liked to see the impressive length of his name stretch out that way, swelling up with the thought that the papers wouldn't be worth a cent without that name, and the thought that it meant so much to the peace and dignity of the state. This was a different job; he regretted that she hadn't ordered a rubber stamp.

It was a hot, dry, hay-making day. Tom Laylander's

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 boots were white with dust when he came in the door; dust was marked in the sweated wrinkles of his sleeves. He stood just inside the door, hesitating, apologetic, afraid of stepping on somebody's toes, or somebody's rights, or somebody's floor, as he always seemed. The sheriff put down his pen, slowly, in a dazed and astounded way, his chicken face as expressive of surprise as it ever depicted any emotion in his life.

"Well, I'll be damned!" said the sheriff.

"Yes, sir," said Tom, respectfully, all rattled and embarrassed, his face as red as if the sheriff had damned him, rather than his official and private self.

"I thought you was back on the Brazos by this time," said the sheriff, frowning on his visitor, greatly displeased, to all appearances, that he was not.

"No, sir," said Tom.

"I see you ain't. Well, where have you been? What're you doin' here?"

"I come up to tell you about them cows of mine."

"I don't want to hear nothin' about your damn cows," the sheriff declared. "If you've got 'em down in Texas, keep 'em there. I don't never want to see the color of their hides agin."

"They're not down in Texas. They're just down here a little ways, six or seven miles southwest of town."

The sheriff got up, leaned forward across his desk, his weight on his rigid arms. He seemed to be an injured and much wronged man, and that injury and that wrong imposed on him by a friend.

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 the degree of love. They are certainly veiled on account of their habit and environment.

What we have said about this question is enough for our purpose. Now we would take up the second problem.

Problem Second: Prophetic Mission:—There are two points which are to be discussed in this problem. First, the proof of the coming of the prophets; and secondly an explanation of the fact that the man claiming to be a prophet is really so and does not lie. Many people are desirous of proving the existence of the prophets by analogy—and such are the Mutakallimun. They say that it is proved that God speaks and intends, and is the master of His creatures. It is quite consistent for such a being in the visible world to send a messenger to his dependent people. Hence such a thing is also possible in the unseen world. They have thought of making this valid for proving the advent of the prophets, by absurd and


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 "You mean you drove them cows back from the Nation and brought 'em up here to the edge of town?" he demanded. "Well, what in the hell made you drive 'em down there in the first place if you didn't have nerve enough to go on?"

"I never drove 'em down there," Tom denied, with a stiffening of dignity and pride. "If I had 'a' done it, sir, I'd 'a' went right on. I wouldn't reach out my hand to take the most worthless trash in the world, sir, if the law had a claim on it. I've waited five days for you to come and take them cows off of my hands. I thought maybe the two boys that let 'em get away never come back to tell you."

"They come back, all right," said the sheriff, still pretty well up on the pinnacle of his astonishment. "Now, look a-here, kid: if you didn't drive them cattle off, who done it? Was it Maud Kelly and that other girl?"

"I think they just took it into their heads to move, the way cattle will do sometimes," said Tom.

"Only you know a dang sight better. Yes, them two boys come back and told me you was down there. What I can't see is what made you come back. Why in the devil didn't you go on home?"

The sheriff spaced the words of this question widely, speaking them in the slow, impressive, argumentative manner of a man who is trying to show another the enormity of his fault.

"I'm not a robber and a thief," Tom replied.

"You can't rob yourself, you darned fool! Every-

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 body here, even Judge Burns, believes them cattle belong to you by rights. That note you brought into court fixed you—the judge had to decide for Withers on that. But this time—oh, hell!"

"I didn't expect many people up here to look at it the way I do."

"If there's anybody with as much sense as a rabbit that will, I'd like to see the color of his hair."

"If you'll be so kind as to send somebody down and take 'em off of my hands, I'll be obliged."

"You've lost for good this time," the sheriff said, entirely disgusted with such a simpleton. "Twice the cards turned your way, but you didn't have sense enough to go the limit either time. They'll never come up for you again, kid. Yes, I'll send somebody down—I'll have to send somebody, now you've got them damn cows up here under my nose."

"Thank you, sir," said Tom, turning to go.

"Say, hold on a minute," the sheriff hailed, jerking his head as if to pull Laylander back. "I'll tell you what I'm goin' to do; I'm goin' to deputize you to guard them cattle yourself till they're sold and delivered to the buyer on my bill of sale."

"Well, I don't know," Tom demurred. "If there's anybody else—"

"There ain't nobody else. This town's full of bums you couldn't pry off of them saloon chairs with a redhot crowbar. You might as well be makin' two dollars a day as hangin' around here doin' nothing. Your cows-

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 far-fetched arguments which only Brahmins should use. They say that it is possible both in the observed and unseen world. In the observed world it is quite evident, that when a man stands up before a king and says, "O ye men, I am the messenger of the king towards you" and produces credentials for his claim, it is necessary to acknowledge him to be true. They say that in the case of the prophets, the credentials are the miracles which they perform. For certain reasons this method is quite fit and satisfactory for the common people, but when investigated there appear many flaws in the principle. Our acknowledgement of a man who claims to be the messenger of a king is not true unless we know that the symbols which he has are those of the royal messenger, which can only happen, if a king tells his subjects that whenever they happen to see such and such symbols with a man, which are particularly his, they should take him as his messenger.


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 're gone now, anyhow. You might 'a'—oh, hell! what's the use! Hold up your hand and be sworn."

Tom thought it was just as well, perhaps better, for him to look after the cattle until they should pass out of the law's hands into Cal Withers's, when he would be free to act in the matter after his own way. He lifted his hand and was made a deputy sheriff in few words.

"When Withers—or whoever buys 'em, and it'll be him—comes down there with a bill of sale signed by me—here, this is my signature, take one of these along so you can identify it—you deliver the cattle to him, and then you step out. Your commission expires that minute, your official duty will be over. Come up here and get your pay."

Tom was not as keenly conscious of the ridiculous, ironical humor of the situation as the sheriff. While he recognized his unusual position as custodian of his own property waiting sheriff's sale, he was utterly blind to the opportunities which a less scrupulous, and perhaps wiser man, might have jumped to profit by. He did not even suspect that the sheriff hoped he might wake up to a realization of his own interest in thematter at last, and head the cattle back across the line.

They were his cows; his interest lay in seeing them put on as much meat as possible in the shortest time. Yet perhaps he was not quite as simple as the sheriff thought him. He grinned a little as he rode out of town, thinking that it was a kind of a joke on him sure enough.

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 When this is so, one can object, from where does it appear that performance of miracles is the special sign of the prophets? This can be proved neither by law nor by reason. To prove it by religion is still more impossible; it does not admit it. Reason alone cannot affirm that they are the special symbols of prophecy, except that in many cases they were found in people who claimed to be prophets and in none other. So in this case a proof of anyone's prophecy is based upon two premises. First, the man who claims to be a prophet has performed a miracle, and secondly, everyone who performs a miracle is a prophet.

Now as to the premise that the claimant for prophecy has performed miracles we can say that it pertains to our senses after we have admitted that there are actions performed by men, which can neither be made by wondrous workmanship or by some particular forces, but are beyond our conception. The second


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 But it was a joke with two sides to it, Tom realized. He could see one side, the sheriff could see the other. He rode past the Cottonwood Hotel, where he saw Banjo Gibson in his accustomed place. Banjo wondered what business that darn fool feller had with the station agent that time of the day when he saw Laylander dismount and go into the depot, leaving his horse beside the platform. Presently he came out and rode on, passing again within fifty feet of Banjo Gibson but not giving him as much as the favor of a glance.

Out the dusty country road toward the river, Tom went, crossed the shallow stream and followed its meandering way to the place where his cattle were grazing on the rich grass of the valley. As he rode he thought not of the cattle, nor of his new duty in connection with them, but of Louise.

Poor little lamb! he thought. Led away by her great desire to see him in possession of his own again, she had not considered the right or the wrong of the action she had urged him to take. By this time she would be sorry, he expected. She might come riding along almost any day to tell him she was sorry, and give him her little hand in contrition. Poor little lamb!

Russius Ransom was delighted to learn that Tom had been promoted, as he called it, to the job of deputy sheriff. He said he reckoned they would start for Texas in the morning, a conjecture which Tom corrected with unusual harshness. But Russius felt his hopes of seeing what kind of a country Texas was, and what sort of colored persons were down there, rise

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 again the next day when he saw Tom looking off to the south every little while.

It was drawing him on, Russius said. He thought that Texas man would begin to show a streak of sense after a while and use the authority of his official position. A sheriff could take anything he wanted and go anywhere he pleased. Nobody could stop a sheriff; he was a man who could bust right through.

Tom was not thinking of Texas, his eyes on the south, but of Louise. Her conscience must be troubling her greatly by this time, he believed, remembering her earnest avowal that she was going to be right there to help him when he needed help to square his account with the man who had tried to rob him under the law. Tried to; Tom never would admit to himself that it had yet been done.

Conscience would burn in Louise when she thought of that vow, and urge her to strike out and find him, poor little dove! He did not want to drive the cattle any farther from McPacken; right about here was where he wanted to be when Cal Withers came to take them over on the sheriff's bill of sale. But he would keep them ranging along close to the old trail, so he would see Louise when she came in her sorrow. Then, when she came, half blinded by her tears, he would go to meet her, his heart in his hand.

In McPacken the sheriff was keeping his own counsel concerning the men in charge of the herd. He had not told anybody of Tom Laylander's appointment; he didn't want it to get to Cal Withers's ears. Withers

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 would kick up a row over it. He couldn't be expected to appreciate the joke as the sheriff did.

Meantime, the days marched off. The day of the sale arrived, finding Tom ranging the cattle along the Arkansas River, a few miles from McPacken, by the side of the old Texas trail. His heart was in his hand, feeling as if it must wither away and perish of loneliness and despair. Louise had not come.

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N keeping with precedent, that ancestor worship of courts and lawyers, and all attendant upon the ponderous machinery which they revolve, the sale of Tom Laylander's cattle was held at noon, from the west steps of the county court house, on the appointed day. Cal Withers was the only bidder. The sheriff gave him the required evidence of ownership, and sent him off to claim his own.

Before holding the sale the sheriff had taken a private scout to the range to find whether Tom Laylander had come to his senses and gone off to Texas with the herd. He found Tom a few miles out of town, faithful to his trust, the cattle beginning to look sleek and fit, the biggest bargain for a judgment of ten thousand dollars and costs that a man was likely to run across in a lifetime.

The sheriff pretended to be greatly relieved to find the cattle still within his jurisdiction.

"I've been so busy I couldn't run out to locate you before," he explained, "but I had a wild feelin' in me

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 you'd drove them cows down to the Nation. If you had 'a', Withers he'd 'a' sued me on my bond."

Tom had not made any reply to this. He was weary of insinuations and suggestions, disgusted with the warped and dishonest grain of Kansas people in general, if those around McPacken were to be taken as a fair sample of the whole. The sheriff went back to town, feeling safe, knowing that Tom could not get the cattle out of Kansas now before the sale, even if he should experience a change of heart.

The sheriff knew Laylander was a bigger fool than he ever had thought him. This had settled it beyond any doubt. Neither bravery nor cunning, sagacity nor reason, had brought that kid through his adventure with the bank robbers; nothing but that inscrutable supervision, that divine insurance, of fools.

Withers did not wait to get his dinner. With two men at his back he galloped off to the place where the sheriff said he would find the herd. He kept a sharp watch for Tom Laylander while in town, knowing very well that the lanky young Texan had not said his last word in that controversy. Withers wanted to get the cattle away from McPacken, his brand put on them, his ownership made complete. There was something like a cold chill of impending disaster at his back, urging him away from town, making it a torture to resist the impulse to twist in the saddle every little while and look behind.

That look of uneasiness grew in the cattleman's face as he rode, that strange coldness of threat at his back

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 like an indefinable terror of night. His broad red suspenders were sweated and dusty over his gray shirt; the beard of a week was ash-gray over his cheeks and chin. He looked like a man pursued by many cares, his eyes fretted around by fine wrinkles, his big shaggy mustache dropping over his thick-lipped mouth.

The two cowboys along with him were not touched by the shadow of his cares, nor concerned in them to the least degree. They had taken a few shots of whisky while waiting for the sale, their mouths were full of loose laughter as they came on in their employer's dust.

Tom Laylander looked like any other cowhand from a distance. Cal Withers, not expecting to encounter him in that direction, approached him with confidence where he stood watch on the flank of the herd, the wagon a mile or so beyond him under some cottonwoods on the river bank. Withers was within ten rods of Tom before he recognized him. He jerked his horse up, veering off a little as if dodging a shot, throwing his followers into disorder of sudden surprise.

"Watch that man!" Withers warned them, hand thrown to his gun.

Laylander was sitting straight and alert, rifle raised in attitude of confident defense. He was as cool and easy as a man who had both might and right upholding his hand. Cal Withers must have felt the cold shadow of his impalpable fear suddenly materialized before his eyes, and understood that he never would be able to snap

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 out his gun in time. He held up a hand in token of pacific intention.

"If you've got any business with me, Colonel Withers, approach and state it," Tom requested.

"That's the cow jerry!" said one of the men.

"Sa-ay man!" the other marvelled, blowing the words out on a big breath, as for the close-cutting to the edge of some peril that had left him with his life.

Withers threw a quick glance over his shoulder to see what his men were doing, motioned them up, and rode forward, keeping his hand pretty close to his gun.

"Where's the man in charge of these cattle?" Withers demanded, scowling and gruff, his voice considerably bigger than his confidence that everything stood the way he'd like to have it there.

"Right here,' Tom replied.

"I mean the deputy sheriff. Where's he at?"

"You're lookin' at him," said Tom.

"Laylander, I don't want none of your damn jokin', if that's what you call a joke."

"It's just about as serious a piece of business as you ever was up against, Colonel Withers. Didn't the sheriff tell you he deputized me several days ago when the men he had watchin' my cattle quit?"

"Not on your life he never, the damn thief! Well, I've got a bill of sale for em. I'm here to take charge of these cattle as owner."

The two cowboys had come up. They sat looking at Tom in stupid wonder, leaving Cal Withers to figure

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 out for himself how he was to enforce and defend his claim of ownership to the herd. All they could think about was that they were face to face with the cow jerry, the man who had followed four bank robbers into No Man's Land and come back with the sack of money. That was the gun—that gun he had right there in his hands! Withers could not have produced money enough, if he had thrown down all he possessed, to induce one of them to lay a hand to his gun.

"You three gentlemen ride ahead of me over to the wagon," Tom directed. "I'll look at your paper over there, and take your receipt."

Withers seemed assured by Laylander's manner, which was far from that naturally expected of a man called upon to surrender twenty thousand dollars' worth of property to one who had cheated him out of it, as he believed. Tom was mild-spoken and steady, no flurry of resentment or enmity about him. He rode a little way behind the three, the only indication that he was master of the situation being the rifle, which he held as one holds his piece when waiting for the game to break cover.

Cal Withers knew, and the two cowboys with him knew, that Laylander would fire if he had to do it without lifting the gun to his shoulder, loose-jointed and limber-armed, putting his shots about where he wanted them to go. That was Texas Ranger style, a fashion of shooting from the saddle well know to men of the southwestern range.

Russius Ransom had prepared the noonday meal.

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 Several times he had blown the conch shell until he could feel his ears stretch, to summon Tom to his refreshment. Russius couldn't understand why he lingered out there on the edge of the herd. He was about to take horse and go after him when he saw the three riders approach. From their order of advance toward the wagon, the cook understood that Tom had not received them as a friendly delegation. He was quite ready to take a hand in anything that was to come off on the side of that Texas man.

Cal Withers and his men halted under the tree, close to the cook's dinner spread on the tailboard of the wagon. Withers drew a paper from his shirt pocket, offering it with a sudden lurch, reaching across his own body clumsily, presenting it with his left hand.

"Here's the sheriff's bill of sale. I suppose you're authorized to receive it," he said.

"I don't like a man that does business with his left hand while he's reachin' for his gun with his right," Tom said. "Russius, take these gentlemen's guns and put 'em in the wagon. Don't touch nothing but the leather, gentlemen."

"Keep your guns on you, boys," Withers said, in the calm, advisory way of a man in authority. "Nobody's got the right to take your guns off of you as long as you're inside of the law."

"It's too hot a day to have any argument over it, Colonel Withers," Tom said, in gentle, regretful way. He appeared entirely friendly, almost conciliatory. Only the rifle in his hands seemed to balance and poise.

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 The two cowboys stripped off their belts and guns in as many seconds, handing them down to Russius, who kept his eyes rolling for fear that Withers was going to shoot him in the back.

"All right, Tom," Withers agreed, cheerfullly, yielding as if he was the gainer in the dispute. "We can do business without guns, as far as I'm concerned."

Tom slipped the rifle into the scabbard under his leg, changing it for his pistol, giving him one free hand for business. He took the paper from Withers and read it; brought out the signature the sheriff had given him and compared it with the one on the bill of sale.

"It looks all right, I guess it is all right," he said. He gave it back to Withers. "I'll ask you to write a little notation on the back of it, if you please. Step over to the endgate of the wagon and use it for a table—here, you'd better write with this self-inkin' pen. I don't want any more pencil writin' on papers of mine."

"If you want a receipt, I'll write it on something else," Withers said, sitting half in the saddle, one thigh across the seat. "I'll just keep this bill of sale myself."

"Step down and write on the back of that paper what I tell you to write," Tom ordered.

Withers was not as calm as his bearing indicated, nor as friendly as his speech seemed. If he could have got a moment's edge at any time since his arrival, he would have shot Laylander without parley. The situation had developed so quickly that his usual resourcefulness and trickery in a tight pinch failed him and left

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 him flat. Tom Laylander was the last man he had expected to see in front of him that, day.

"All right, Tom," Withers yielded, swinging to the ground, where he stood turning a sly eye to see where Russius had put the guns, and to calculate the chance of putting the wagon between him and Laylander in a bold jump.

Russius was close by, breaking the pistols, ejecting the shells. He threw the belts and holsters under the wagon, and went around to the front to put the guns in another place.

Tom rode a little nearer to the tail of the wagon, handing down his fountain pen. He was watchful and cautious, ready for any kind of a trick Withers might try to throw.

"Put the day and the date on the back of that bill, and write what I tell you to," he directed. He took a silver dollar from his vest pocket and gave it to Withers, who looked at it with unfeigned surprise.

"What in the hell's that for?" Withers asked, flushing and affronted as if he had been made the object of some vulgar jest.

"Put down the day and the date," Tom directed again. "Now, go ahead and write this; For value received—"

"I'll be damned if I do!" said Withers.

"Colonel Withers, if you've got any word to leave, you can step off to one side and give it to one of these men," Tom said.

There was no bluster in Laylander's manner of say-

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 ing this, not an inflection of rudeness or threat. But Withers had lived a good while and learned something. He knew it was his sentence of death unless he resumed the pen and wrote what he was told to write. Withers's face was pale when he turned to write; the tremor of his body made a little rattling among the tin dishes near his hand.

"For value received," Tom repeated, pausing until he saw the words take shape on the paper, "I hereby assign and deliver to Tom Laylander"—slowly, waiting for the crudely-formed words to grow under the cowman's thick fingers—"all of my right, title and interest in the cattle herein described."

Tom took the paper from Withers and read it.

"That's all right, and there's your dollar," he said. "Sign it and give it to me."

"I'll write you anything, Tom; I'll sign anything you want," Withers said, regaining his poise again, now that he saw through what he believed to be the trick of a simpleton. "Where'll you take 'em to?" he asked, handing back the signed paper.

"I reckon I'll manage," Tom replied.

"Do you think I'll be settin' around while you're drivin' my cattle down to the Nation? Do you think you'll walk away with this piece of highway robbery? If you don't kick air between now and tomorrow night I miss my guess!"

"Colonel Withers, you're goin' to back up to that wagon wheel and straddle it, and stand there spread

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 out and roped, so tight you can't bat your eye, till I've done what I aim to do. Say no more."

"You can't walk away with a trick like that," Withers declared, heedless of the injunction of silence. "You're in a civilized country now; I tell you these cattlemen up here in Kansas'll hang a man for a trick like that as quick as they can lay hands on him. If you think you can put through a steal on me this way, go ahead and try it."

"I aim to, Colonel Withers."

Withers protested that he'd die before he'd turn his back to the wagon wheel, and that any man who tried to put a rope on him would come to an abrupt end. He blustered and cursed, threatening with one breath, arguing with a shrewd persuasiveness the next. He offered to ride away and stay away any limit Tom might set, allowing him to carry out his plans for removing the cattle without interference.

"When I pass my word it's as good as my note," he declared.

"Every bit," Tom agreed. "Light down there and rope him—knock him cold if you have to—and don't monkey away any more time."

Withers's cowboys were not keen for the job, for he threatened them with a terrible hour of reckoning if they desecrated him by laying on a violent hand. Russius Ransom put an end to the cowman's defiance by roping him from behind and dragging him off his feet.

"Somebody will come along tomorrow and turn you loose," Tom told Withers when they had him duly

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 spread and bound to the hind wheel of the wagon. "I'm not goin' to gag you, Colonel Withers. You can stand here and talk to yourself. The more you holler the drier you'll be. Come on with me, you men."

Withers's two men took orders with alert ears, and stepped fast to carry them out, for the ordinary cowboy was no more a ranting, roaring fellow than the hireling of small intelligence in any walk of life. These two men were fair samples of their craft, slim and sinewy, their cunning all in their hands. There was no more material in either of them than would have made a brakeman of Windy Moore's calibre, or a street car motorman of the present day.

They were awed by a vast respect and fear, for the cow jerry's adventure was the talk of cow camps farand near. They would have jumped just as lively with their guns on as they did without them. Tom's way of handling the situation with Withers had contributed greatly to this feeling of respect. When a man was smart enough to play a hand that way, they said, nothing could beat him. There was a good deal of spontaneous ginger in their movements and sharp cries as they helped Russius range the cow jerry's herd in a long line and start off on a slow drive toward McPacken.

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OUISE found time dragging along like an impeding weight. Ranch life in the open places was not all that she had heard of it; the romance of range cattle, and the men who rode after them, drew away as one approached, and stood a dissolving mirage in the distance. She was ready to return to McPacken after a few days of it in Jim Kelly's notable mansion beside the Cherokee Trail.

Cattle raising was merely a business, she found, like any other, with the owner of the herd; cattle grazing a primitive trade to those who threw the ropes and handled the branding-irons. These latter were simple, ordinary men, no more noble, daring nor chivalrous as a class, than the jerries in Orrin Smith's gang. There was a certain careless independence about some of the younger ones, such as flares in youth everywhere and spurs it on to better its condition. Yet in most of them this spirit was not, and never had been.

Taking them as a class, cowhands were depressing associates, their lean vocabularies reduced by the restrictions of polite society when they came to Jim's, to

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And after: Praise be to God for all His praiseworthy acts, and blessings on Mohammad, His slave, the Pure, the Chosen One and His Apostle. The purpose of the following treatise is to inquire through sacred Law whether the learning of philosophy and other sciences appertaining thereto is permitted, or called dangerous, or commended by the Law, and if commended, is it only approved or made obligatory.


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 such extent that they hadn't words enough left to express much of anything but yes and no.

Maud had grown away from this small mental confinement of the range. She said cow handling was a greatly overrated business; cowhands, like the brigands and pirates of romance, nothing but dirty, vulgar, swearing fellows elevattd by popular glamour to a 'nobility not their right. The guns they carried, said Maud, were responsible for that. Hang a gun on any common man and you make a hero of him. It hints of perils faced which he never meets, of combats fought which never take place in his narrow, monotonous life. There was not one cowhand in fifty, Maud declared, who could hit a horse with a pistol-shot at a hundred feet.

Jim hung around the ranch for a day or two, until he got his ears full of Maud's latest songs, then rode off on a tour of inspection of his various outfits afield. Cowhands came in from the nearer camps of an evening, sprightly bucks with brightly colored kerchiefs around their necks, dollar watches in their pockets dangling leather straps, combed and perfumed outrageously, and fairly clean above their necks.

Old Frank, who seemed to be a sort of adjutant, was around most of the time. He was likely to appear at any hour, lean his chair against the wall and sit tasting his unlighted cigarette, heels hooked over the chair rung, nothing at all to say. He appeared to have about the same status in Jinny's household as a chicken or a dog.

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 It was Maud who proposed going back to town. The notion seemed to hatch suddenly about noon on a certain day that was not distinguishable, except for this event, from the run of monotonous days that had gone before. Louise agreed. Within half an hour they were on their way, expecting to make it to McPacken by six or seven o'clock.

Maud explored the country as they drove, looking with keen and curious interest for trace of Laylander's cattle.

"The sheriff was to auction them off at noon today," Louise reminded her. "I suppose they're up at McPacken now."

"No, they don't drive 'em up to the court house steps and sell 'em, like you would a wagon and team. They're out on the range somewhere. I was just wonderin' what that darn fool did about it. Jim says he got 'em out of the Nation and went rangin' 'em off toward the river."

"I think maybe he was right about it, after all, Maud," Louise said, in the hard way of confession that a stubborn mind will yield when convinced at last. "It was about all a strictly honorable man could do."

"He's no more strictly honorable than anybody else," Maud declared. "Jim wouldn't steal cattle, but he certainly would grab his own away from somebody that was beatin' him out of them if he could. So would I; so would anybody with sense enough to crack an egg."

"I wonder what he intended to do after Withers

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 bought the cattle in, and whether he's done it?" Louise speculated.

"What could he do?" Maud asked with bitter emphasis. "He threw down the strongest hand a man ever held, and I'm here to tell you there ain't anybody around here that would go the limit Jim went to help a man he never saw before. Everything was all set here for a get-away; it couldn't shape up that lucky way once in a thousand times."

"I saw it that way at the time, too, but I seem to get a different slant on it, as the railroad men say, the more I turn it over in my mind. It was all right for Jim to have his men run them over the line, just as Tom said. They didn't belong to him. I expect Tom would have done as much for a friend.

"Yes, he might; I don't say he wouldn't. But there's something wrong with a man that won't take his own away from a thief."

"He did, Maud. You know very well—"

"Oh, that was different."

"It was because he'd be going against the law, and not an individual who had wronged him, that Tom wouldn't drive the cattle on to Texas, Maud."

"That kind of reason, or religion, or whatever it is, passes away high over my head, kid," said Maud, with the unfeeling rudeness of the range that sometimes came into her manner and speech.

"Let it go," said Louise, dismissing Laylander, his troubles, mistakes and morals, with the words.

It was hot and wearisome riding in the uncovered

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 buckboard, which pitched and twisted in bone-racking way over the little hummocks of bunch grass, wheeled traffic not being frequent enough over that road to wear them down. That was one disadvantage of a country that did not confine travellers to a marked and designated road. Every driver could choose his own road, shaping his course according to the judgment of his eye for smoothness.

This apparent smoothness of the prairie surface was most deceptive. A short distance away it seemed as if one could drive over it in comfort at a smart clip, that the roughness lay only a little way on every side. In that manner it seemed to lead the traveller on always, with the hope and expectation of coming into smooth country at last, yet never reaching it to his journey's end.'

Louise begged Maud to spare the horses, asking for pity where pity never had been bred. Maud laughed, in the unmerciful range way of disregarding the suffering of any creature that went on four legs, but when Louise complained that the terrific heat of the sun had given her an excruciating headache, which every twist and bump of the vehicle intensified, Maud slowed down.

Maud was sympathetic. She said she knew what a sun-pain on the prairie was; she used to get it when she rode the range. It would beat and sprangle in fiery prongs through the brain, threatening to blow the head to pieces, until the sun went down. Then it would ease away like heat going out of iron.

Louise said nothing about an ache of loneliness and

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 We maintain that the business of philosophy is nothing other than to look into creation and to ponder over it in order to be guided to the Creator,—in other words, to look into the meaning of existence. For the knowledge of creation leads to the cogniscance of the Creator, through the knowledge of the created. The more perfect becomes the knowledge of creation, the more perfect becomes the knowledge of the Creator. The Law encourages and exhorts us to observe creation. Thus, it is clear that this is to be taken either as a religious injunction or as something approved by the Law. But the Law urges us to observe creation by means of reason and demands the knowledge thereof through reason. This is evident from different verses of the Quran. For example the Quran says: "Wherefore take example from them, ye who have eyes." That is a clear indication of the necessity of using the reasoning faculty, or rather


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 regret that had been the forerunner of the other. But that ache had been growing in her conscience day by day since she flared up and burned with the wicked little flame of her unjust anger the silver cord that had bound her interests to Tom Laylander's. She was ashamed that she had urged him to do wrong, herself put up as the reward for his infidelity to his life's most sacred principles. Not much of a temptation, she reflected bitterly. Tom had done well to say farewell, and turn his back and ride away, his faith to his simple ideals unbroken.

"There's been cattle here within a day or two," said Maud, pointing to the ground with her whip, calling attention to the trampled tall grass in the broad river bottom, which they were crossing. "I guess here's where St. Thomas of Texas had his lovely little cows."

"They don't seem to he here now," said Louise, clinging desperately to the pitching buckboard as she looked around.

"Gee! it's nearly sundown, and us only comin' to the river," said Maud. "We'll have to crack it up a little, Louise, or we'll never get there. We're two miles above the crossin' now, I've dodged around so much to find soft places for you. How's your sun-pain?"

"Better, I think."

"Sure. It'll leave you as soon as the sun sets."

"There's a wagon over by the river," said Louise.

Maud pulled up, slowly, leaning back to take up the slack of the lines, looking sharply ahead.

"That's right. Looks like a chuck wagon. Withers

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 sent it in, I suppose, to feed the crew that's goin' to take charge of that simple-minded kid's cows."

"Listen! Isn't that somebody yelling?"

"You've got good ears, kid," said Maud, looking at her curiously. "Has that pain struck—"

"There! don't you hear him? It's somebody in trouble, I tell you, Maud."

"It's the camp cook singin'. They generally sound like they're in deep trouble when they sing," Maud said.

"Drive over a little nearer, let's listen again," Louise suggested.

"What's the use goin' any further out of our way just to hear—"

"Please, Maud. We've got plenty of time."

"I don't want to go buttin' into one of old Withers's cow camps," said Maud. She drove toward the wagon, in spite of her undoubted reluctance, approaching it within two or three hundred yards, where she stopped.

"Nobody around," she said.

Cal Withers, spread out on the wagon wheel, was on the opposite side, his head hidden by the canvas top. He heard them, and raised his high, cowboy note, which much whooping throughout the afternoon had not dulled.

"Does sound like somebody in trouble," said Maud, still half doubtful, entirely suspicious. "But you never can tell."

Maud was not moved by any great compassion when she drove around the wagon and discovered the cow-

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 man in his undignified plight. A prank like this was accounted the rarest humor in the gentle relaxations of the range; Maud had been familiar with such jokes all her life. There was no point in a joke, in the humor of the old-time cowboy, that did not give the victim of it pain. The greater the suffering, the funnier the situation.

"It's Withers!" Louise whispered.

"It sure does favor him," said Maud, her grin spreading so big it seemed to push her ears back.

Withers had not been expecting women, and least of all women these two. It was just about the same to him in his extremity as if Tom Laylander had come back to taunt him in his agony of thirst and raging passion against the ropes that held him. He stood panting, lopping forward in exhaustion as far as the slack of the ropes would let him go, as miserable an object as pity ever looked upon.

Withers lifted his head after a few moments of shamed silence. It was evident that he was suffering more from his own rage than from the galling of the ropes. To sun and thirst he was hardened; he could have stood against them with any man that ever rode the range. But he was unused to humiliation, unaccustomed to having his rough-shod will bent for even a few hours from its way of going where it would.

Louise was moved by the cruelty practiced against him, unworthy of all compassion as she knew him to be. He appeared so entirely abject and ashamed, and

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 still too proud to appeal to women to help him in his helplessness.

"I guess we'll drive on," said Maud.

She pulled up the slack of the dangling lines, turning a look full of appreciation for his comical fix on Colonel Withers.

"No, no!" Louise checked her. "I'm going to turn him loose."

"I don't believe we'd better butt in on anybody's joke," Maud advised.

"I wouldn't ask the favor of you, young lady," said Withers, directing his appeal to Louise, "if there was a chance of anybody else comin' along. I may have to hang here a week if you go by."

"We can tell somebody in town, they can come over," Maud said, speaking for the benefit of Louise, upon whom the old rascal's appeal was not lost.

"It would be a shame to leave him suffering here," Louise declared. She jumped out of the buckboard as she spoke, starting to Withers's relief.

"You'd better think it over a minute, kid," Maud counseled, with a shrewd intimation behind her words, a more knowing gleam in her humorous eyes. It was the fine point of the joke that passed over Louise.

"There ought to be a knife in that box at the end of the wagon," Withers suggested. "You could work faster with that."

The cook's butcher knife was there, a prodigious instrument with the shin-bone of an ox for a handle. Maud Kelly sat laughing until the buckboard shook

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 while Louise sawed at the ropes with eager compassion and set the cowman free.

Withers broke for the water keg slung to the side of the wagon as the last rope fell from his leg, not stopping for even a glance of gratitude or thanks for his deliverer. When he had poured down several pints he scrambled under the wagon for his belt, then rummaged around with head under the canvas until he had found his gun.

"Thanks, awfully!" said Maud, with mocking sarcasm.

Withers was buckling on his cartridge belt with vicious haste, his eyes exploring the immediate vicinity for trace of his horse. Maud's taunt reminded himof his duty, which selfishness had pushed aside. Louise was putting the butcher knife back in the cook's kit. Withers turned to her, his eyes red, his thick gray hair tumbling down to his heavy, scowling brows.

"I'll remember this favor, young lady, and I hope I may be able to do as much for you some day," he said.

"Well, I hope not," said Louise, laughing a little at the thought of herself tied in that undignified fashion to a wagon wheel. "Who did it, Colonel Withers?"

"Crowd of fellers held me up and robbed me."

"Do you know who they were?"

"I could identify 'em," Withers replied, portentously.

Maud Kelly leaned back and laughed; a loud and strident laugh, the sound of it echoing among the wil-

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 lows at the river side. Louise looked at her reproachfully.

"It was a barbarous thing to do—tie a man that way and leave him to die!" Louise said. "I hope you catch the scoundrels that did it."

Maud hit a high note on the keyboard of her laughter there. It was almost a shriek of merriment. She rolled against the high-backed seat, drumming the buckboard with her hilarious heels.

Withers was beating the dust out of his trampled hat against the very wheel which had held him inglorious prisoner. He did not appear to hear Maud's unaccountable merriment.

"My horse seems to wandered off," Withers said, turning to Louise. "Could you give me a ride over to McPacken?"

"Not on your life!" said Maud, suddenly sober, exceedingly emphatic and severe. "Come on, kid. I guess you've done about all the damage you can do."

"Why not let him go with us, Maud? He could sit on the back."

"Come on here, I tell you, and shut up!" said Maud.

Louise was startled by the peremptory harshness of Maud's voice. She understood there was an old enmity between the houses of Kelly and Withers. She attributed Maud's hostility to that, and did not stand to make any further plea.

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 least it was not sufficient to impel him to lift his hand in any further expression of it, although Louise turned and looked back as if expecting it, wondering that he could let it pass so lightly.

"You've played hell now!" said Maud.

"Why, Maud! What have I done?"

"Who do you suppose put Withers on that wagon wheel, you poor little goose? Who was the rough wild feller that robbed the innocent colonel and fixed him so he couldn't follow?"

"Why, how should I know?" said Louise. "He could identify them, he said."

"I'll bet he could," said Maud, her face expressive of anything but mirth now.

She drove on, regardless of bumps, slashing pretty freely with her whip, the humor apparently gone out of the situation for her.

"I looked for him to sling his gun on me and take the team," Maud said, with something very close to a fearful look over her shoulder. "You darned little fool! standin' there pleadin' for that old robber after you'd cut him loose. You cuttin' him loose—of all the people on earth—you!"

"Well, why not? I don't see anything strange or funny about it."

"No, of course not. That's what made it so funny to me and dear old innocent Colonel Withers. What do you suppose Tom Laylander'll say when he hears of it?"

"Tom Laylander?"

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 both reason and religion, in the interpretation of things. Again it says: "Or do they not contemplate the kingdom of heaven and earth and the things which God hath created." This is a plain exhortation to encourage the use of observation of creation. And remember that one whom God especially distinguishes in this respect, Abraham, the prophet. For He says: "And this did we show unto Abraham: the kingdom of heaven and earth." Further He says: "Do they not consider the camels, how they are created; and the heaven, how it is raised." Or still again: "And (who) meditate on the creation of heaven and earth, saying, O Lord thou hast not created this in vain." There are many other verses on this subject: too numerous to be enumerated.

Now, it being established that the Law makes the observation and consideration of creation by reason obligatory—


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 "Yes, honey," said Maud, with provoking, scornful mockery. "He's the one that tied that innocent old gentleman up to the wagon wheel."

Light began to break and spread over Louise's understanding. Her heart sank, her spirits swooned, leaving her so suddenly weak that her words were little more than a whisper on her dry lips.

"Do you—do you—suppose it was, Maud?"

Maud gave her a withering, contemptuous look, lashed the horses and drove on.

"I guess that red-headed kid had more in him than I gave him credit for," Maud said, after a while. "Well, whatever his scheme was, you've certainly put a kink in it now!"

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OM LAYLANDER found no cars on the siding at the loading pens when he arrived at McPacken with his sweating herd that evening. As soon as he had the cattle safe in the pens he struck off as hot as a hornet for an interview with the station agent, who saw him coming and retreated behind his office door, which he closed and locked. He was a very bloodless and stammering agent when he faced Tom at the ticket window.

"Where's them thirty-five cars I ordered for today?" Tom demanded.

"Well, I tell you, Tom, I thought you was jokin' when you ordered them cars. That's right—I thought you was jokin'. I knew you didn't have any cattle, I didn't know you—"

"If you know your head's on your neck, you ornery little warthog of a man, you jerk some lightnin' to headquarters and order them cars! You have 'em on that sidin', with an engine to butt 'em around, before nine o'clock, or you and me we'll have a little side-talk."

"I guess I can pick 'em up right here in the yards,

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 and consideration is nothing but to make explicit the implicit—this can only be done through reason. Thus we must look into creation with the reason* Moreover, it is obvious that the observation which the Law approves and encourages must be of the most perfect type, performed with the most perfect kind of reasoning. As the Law emphasises the knowledge of God and His creation by inference, it is incumbent on any who wish to know God and His whole creation by inference, to learn the kinds of inference, their conditions and that which distinguishes philosophy from dialectic and exhortation from syllogism. This is impossible unless one possesses knowledge beforehand of the various kinds of reasoning and learns to distinguish between reasoning and what is not reasoning. This cannot be done except one knows its different parts, that is, the different kinds of premises.

Hence, for a believer in the Law and a follower of it, it is necessary to know


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Rh rising of the sun, even to the west, by the word of that Holy One, rejoicing in the very remembrance of God. For the footmen have gone forth from thee, while they were drawn away by the enemy. God shall bring them in to thee, being borne with glory as the throne of a kingdom. For God has decreed that every high mountain shall be brought low, and the eternal hills, and that the valleys be filled, so that the surface of the earth be rendered smooth, that Israel, the glory of God, may walk in safety. The woods, too, shall make shady places, and every sweet-smelling tree shall be for Israel itself by the command of God. For God shall go before with joy in the light of His splendour, with the pity and righteousness which proceeds from Him."

2. Now all these things being such as they are, cannot be understood in reference to super-celestial matters; "for God," it is said, "will show to the whole earth that is under heaven thy glory." But in the times of the kingdom, the earth has been called again by Christ [to its pristine condition], and Jerusalem rebuilt after the pattern of the Jerusalem above, of which the prophet Isaiah says, "Behold, I have depicted thy walls upon my hands, and thou art always in my sight." And the apostle, too, writing to the Galatians, says in like manner, "But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all." He does not say this with any thought of an erratic Æon, or of any other power which departed from the Pleroma, or of Prunicus, but of the Jerusalem which has been delineated on [God's] hands. And in the Apocalypse John saw this new [Jerusalem] descending upon the new earth. For after the times of the kingdom, he says, "I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat upon it, from whose face the earth fled away, and the heaven; and there was no more place for them." And he sets forth, too, the things connected with the general resurrection and the judgment, mentioning "the dead, great and small." "The sea," he says, "gave up the dead which it had in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead that they contained; and the books were opened. Moreover," he


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 "Tom. I'll have 'em for you—I'll put the order through right now."

"While you're orderin', order an engine and crew to be ready by midnight to start with that train for Kansas City. Just put that in your order while you're orderin'. I'll wait here till you're through, you're such a forgetful feller."

Windy Moore's train was down in the yards, changing engines and crews. The business had proceeded to that stage where it could be carried to completion without Windy's presence, which very likely was not altogether as essential as he believed it to be, and Windy himself was coming up the station platform with his rubber coat across his arm, his lantern in his hand. He was grimy and dusty from the long run, and proud of his state. He saw Tom standing at the ticket window as he passed, and turned to get the news.

"Ain't leavin' town, are you Tom?" he inquired.

"No, I'm just shippin' out a little bunch of cows," Tom replied, easy and friendly in his way, yet with something different about him, as Windy Moore sensed; something of sureness, largeness, it might be said, as of a man who had come back to his own proper estate after reverses.

Windy's eyes enlarged; he looked Tom over, not doubting his word, but unable to get it just in the spot 'where his head would take it in.

"You been buyin' up some stock, Tom?"

"No, not precisely buyin', Mr. Moore. I've been re-

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 coverin' a few. I thought I'd better ship before they slip away from me once more."

"Is them them?" Windy jerked his head toward the pens, where Russius Ransom and the two impressed cowhands were roosting on the fence above the cattle, waiting Tom's return and further orders.

"Yes, sir. I'm disappointed in my cars. I ordered them several days ago, but this man failed to send my order in."

"It's all right," the agent announced, turning, hand on his telegraph key. "They'll be set right away for you, Tom."

Windy couldn't get a good breath, the wonder of the situation was so big inside his vest. He pegged along beside Tom down the platform toward the loading pens.

"Well, where's that feller Withers, the one that had a judgment on the note? I thought he was goin' to take them cattle over on the supposed-to-be debt?"

"Yes, sir; Colonel Withers bought my cattle in at the sheriff's sale today. Possession has passed back to me again, however."

"The-e-e hell! Say, where is Withers? Won't he be bustin' along here with a gang of men to take 'em away from you?"

"I don't look for him," said Tom with quiet confidence.

It was from that reply Windy Moore drew his material for the story he began to spread in a few minutes with eager tongue. Tom Laylander, the cow jerry, had killed Cal Withers, and taken possession of

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 his cattle again. Withers was lying dead on the prairie, and Tom was there in town, cool as ice, waiting for cars to be set on the loading track.

Windy went on embellishing the story as he talked, stirring up no end of excitement, enthusiasm and admiration for the cow jerry. Windy said Withers's cowboys were gathering at the dead cowman's ranch, to come to McPacken, avenge their employer and take the cattle away to the range.

It was the duty of every man in McPacken, Windy said, to put his gun in his pocket and stand up for the cow jerry's rights. They owed it to him; he was the man that brought back the coin and saved the bank, and a good many of their rolls along with it. For one, Windy was going to throw lead if any sheriff or gang of cowboys, or anybody else, tried to take that cow jerry's cattle out of his hands.

Tom offered to pay Withers's two cowboys for their afternoon's work and let them go, confident that they would not be eager to turn their boss loose to visit his threatened vengeance on their heads. They said they believed they'd try to get a job in the stockyards in Kansas City, where pay was better and life easier than on the range. Wouldn't Tom give them a job helping him prod up the cattle on the train?

Tom would, and glad to have them. He went to supper very well pleased with the day's progress, leaving Russius and the two cowboys on guard at the pens. A switching crew was assembling his cars on a long track in the yard; through the dusk Tom could see the

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 growing string. The four of them could make short work of loading; by midnight, at the latest, they ought to be hitting the high spots for Kansas City.

For two reasons Tom avoided the Cottonwood Hotel. First, he knew supper would be over, and Goosie would scowl and grumble and serve him scraps; second, because he didn't want to make any explanations about a job only begun, and still doubtful of its determination. For there always was a chance of something coming up to block him, smoothly as things had gone up to that hour. He went to the Lone Star Cafe, hoping it was too dark for Mrs. Cowgill to recognize him across the street and take offense.

The two cowboys were gone when Tom returned. Russius Ransom came down from the fence in a state of excitement unusual for a calm and experienced man such as he was, to report that Cal Withers had arrived in town, and that the station agent had been down there wanting to see Tom, leaving word for him to come to the office as soon as he returned.

The news gave Tom quite a jerk. Somebody had blundered along and set Withers loose, a chance that he had not calculated as likely to turn up in that secluded spot by the river. He looked to the loading track for his cars; they were not there. Down in the yards the noise and swinging lantern signals had subsided. He guessed pretty close to what it meant.

"I'm sorry we couldn't spot them cars for you, Tom," the agent explained, appearing at the window without his over-sleeves, which was equal to public

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 proclamation that he was off duty. 'Colonel Withers was here a few minutes ago threatenin' suit against the company if we furnished you cars to move them cattle. He says you stood him up under your gun and drove 'em off. I'm not here to judge, you understand, but that's what he said."

"Read this," said Tom, placing the bill of sale under the agent's eyes.

"It looks all right, but I can't do a thing," the nervous, worried agent said, hand on the window to pull it down. "The super says you'll have to settle the question of ownership between you before he'll furnish cars for anybody."

The agent shut the window, the panes of which were made opaque by an uneven coat of white paint, that had turned a yellowish tint. It seemed to Laylander that it was the curtain dropped between him and his hopes. Somebody had happened along, where nobody had passed in all the days he had ranged the cattle there, and turned Cal Withers loose. It must have been somebody appointed from the beginning, Tom thought in bitter reflection, to pull down the plans of his life, or he never would have appeared at that unfortunate conjunction. It was somebody born to make trouble. He'd like to see the color of his hair.

If the agent had done his duty in the first place and—ordered the cars; if he, himself, had started toward the Nation with the cattle instead of trying to do the thing this way; if this had happened and that had been done, it would not have come to this, Tom thought. But

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 these things before he begins to look into creation, for they are like instruments for observation. For, just as a student discovers by the study of the law, the necessity of knowledge of legal reasoning with all its kinds and distinctions, a student will rind out by observing the creation the necessity of metaphysical reasoning. Indeed, he has a greater claim on it than the jurist. For if a jurist argues the necessity of legal reasoning from the saying of God:

"Wherefore take example from them O ye who have eyes," a student of divinity has a better right to establish the same from it on behalf of metaphysical reasoning.

One cannot maintain that this kind of reasoning is an innovation in religion because it did not exist in the early days of Islam. For legal reasoning and its kinds are things which were invented also in later ages, and no one thinks they are innovations. Such should also


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 it wasn't to be any other way. It had been arranged when the map of his life was drawn, for that person to cut his trail that afternoon and set Cal Withers free. It was the order of life, and nobody could alter that. But he sure would like to see the color of that man's hair!

Russius Ransom had yielded to the pressure of conscience, or some other equally insistent call, and merged into the night. Tom sat on the running-board laid along the top of the high white fence, considering his situation. The cattle were lying down, as happy in one place as another, puffing out big sighs after their comfortable way as they switched cuds.

Sitting there in the dark, the subdued noises of the town familiar in his ears, Tom confessed he had made a bad business of this undertaking. It would have been better to have worked to his original plan of confronting Withers when the law got through with the case, and settling it between them in his own way. He could have gone back to Texas then and related to them how he had been tolled up into Kansas and sheared like a sheep, for he would have done the least that his neighbors down there expected of a man in such case. If the law will not give a man justice, it rests with him' self to get something on account, at least. That was the way they looked at it in Texas.

Now, what was there to be done? It looked as if things had been framed to make a public spectacle out of him, first getting himself in as deputy sheriff to watch his own cattle, next putting into his mind what

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 he had considered this shrewd trick for forcing Withers to assign him the bill of sale. It would have been all right, with that bill of sale in his pocket, to have headed the cattle into the Nation, the thing he should have done. No arraignment is as severe as conscience; no contempt as bitter as one's own. If Tom Laylander had been as small as he felt himself that night, Cal Withers and the sheriff never would have found him in the dark.

Windy Moore, and several other railroaders, who saw Withers and the sheriff pass the hotel, followed them to the cattle pens to see what was going to happen.

"How's this, Laylander?" the sheriff inquired, coming to a stop a little way from Tom's perch on the fence. "Withers charges you took his cattle away from him and drove 'em here. I'd like to hear your explanation."

"If you'll step up to the depot where there's a light, I'll give you a full and satisfactory answer to your question," Tom replied, thinking that a poor bluff would be better than no bluff at all.

Withers kept in the shade of the sheriff's protection, not half as keen to pull out his gun as he was the day he attached Tom's cattle. Several more railroaders, and a few scattering cowhands from the saloon, added to the little crowd that gathered around the three principals as they drew near the bay window of the depot, where the operator's light was bright.

"Here's a bill of sale from Colonel Withers for the cattle," said Tom, placing it in the sheriff's hand.

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 "I told you he'd spring it!" said Withers. "Pass it over to me—that's mine."

The sheriff backed up to the window, running his eye over both sides of the bill of sale.

"It looks straight enough," he said. "That's your writin', ain't it, Withers?"

"I told you how I come to write it," Withers said, holding himself in with difficulty. "I demand that paper!"

"This seems to be your night for demandin' things and not gittin' 'em," the sheriff said. "You acknowledge you wrote the bill of sale, and signed it, and took value received. Nothing for me to do, that I can see."

The railroad men applauded the sheriff's decision.

"I didn't come to you to be made a damn fool of!" Withers blustered. "Are you goin' to act, or ain't you?"

"It's a civil case," the sheriff declared, with judicial equanimity, handing the bill of sale back to Laylander, whose hopes leaped up in a new flame as if somebody had dashed a cup of kerosene over their paling embers.

"If there's a question of ownership over these cattle," the sheriff continued, "it's a civil case. Bring a suit against Laylander and prove his bill of sale ain't genuine. That's all you can do."

"I'll lay this before the prosecutin' attorney, I'll demand a warrant!"

"Well, colonel, you'll have to go down in the Nation somewhere if you do. He's gone off on a fishin' trip with Judge Burns."

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 be our attitude towards philosophical reasoning. There is another reason why it should be so, but this is not the proper place to mention it. A large number of the followers of this religion confirm philosophical reasoning, all except a small worthless minority, who argue from religious ordinances. Now, as it is established that the Law makes the consideration of philosophical reasoning and its kinds as necessary as legal reasoning, if none of our predecessors has made an effort to enquire into it, we should begin to do it, and so help them, until the knowledge is complete. For if it is difficult or rather impossible for one person to acquaint himself single-handed with all things which it is necessary to know in legal matters, it is still more difficult in the case of philosophical reasoning. And, if before us, somebody has enquired into it, we should derive help from what he has said. It is quite immaterial whether that man is co-religionist or not; for the instru-


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 The sheriff gave this information with evident satisfaction. He could see that every word was making him a vote.

"I demand that you arrest this man without a warrant, then."

"I'd nearly bust a belly-band to oblige you, Colonel, but I couldn't do that."

"The law gives you power to arrest anybody caught in the commission of a crime," Withers insisted. "Do your duty, sheriff—I demand you to do your duty!"

"Yes, and I'll do it without you or anybody else tellin' me," the sheriff replied, with corrective severity.

"You're in on the steal, you long-hungry office hyenar! I'll sue you on your bond!'

"You're beginnin' to talk foolish," the sheriff said.

"Puttin' that man in deputy to guard them cattle, playin' into his hand from the jump. I'll sue you on your bond!"

"If you want to do anything, swear out a writ of replevy," the sheriff advised, undisturbed by the cowman's threats. "There's Judge Coleman over there—take it up with him. I can't do nothing for you."

Judge Coleman came forward with the suggestion, as if to offer his services in the matter of the writ of replevin. He was a short, spare man with a grayishred beard, a lathe machinist in the shops, the only justice of the peace in McPacken. There was a knowing Scottish twinkle in his sharp little blue eyes as he stood in the light gravely shaking his head.

"I couldn't give you a writ of replevin, Mr. Withers,"

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 he said; "on no account could I give you a writ. The law limits my jurisdiction to matters not exceeding ninety-nine dollars."

"You can go straight to hell—both of you!"

Withers threw it in their faces hot, hand on his gun as if he stood ready to begin operations on his own account, seeing that the law offered him no relief. The sheriff hitched around, twisting his lean, coatless shoulders as if his back itched, the rather vulgar contortion bringing his hand to the butt of his gun with surprising facility. Withers blasted him with a scowl, turned his back and walked off into the dark.

The railroaders pressed up to shake hands with Tom, hearty in their appreciation of the admirable trick he had turned on Withers. The sheriff, well pleased with himself and the votes he had made by his diplomatic refusal to meddle in the case, shouldered his way out of them and went off to his own affairs. Bill Pinkerton, foreman of the night switching crew, who had long arms like a gorilla and a great deal of black hair around his eyes, reached over and gave Tom his hand.

"I'd spotted them cyars for y' if been allowed," he explained. "There's not a man of us in McPacken wouldn't go the limit to help y' win back and howld your own."

Windy Moore said they'd see to it that Tom got his cars in the morning, it would be too late to get hold of anybody at headquarters tonight. A conductor, in his long split-tailed coat with brass buttons, looking only half official on account of wearing trousers of another

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 cloth and color, and hat instead of cap, declared Tom would have to do no more than show the superintendent his bill of sale to satisfy him of ownership. Then he'd get his cars without any more talk.

Meantime, somebody suggested, what if Withers came back with a gang and drove the cattle to the range? There had been something threatening in the old rascal's defiant way of going, with his curse flung at the law and the representatives of it.

The railroad men wanted to stand guard over the cattle with Tom, a hardship that he would not on any account put them to, he said. If they should hear a disturbance in that quarter during the night, they might come and give him a hand, which would be gladly ac'cepted. They arranged it with Baldy Evans, night watchman at the shops, whose main job was keeping steam up in the boilers, to blow the whistle if he heard shooting break out at the cattle pens.

Windy Moore had his bulldog in his pocket that minute, ready for any trouble that might come along, and keen to meet it. There always was a great feeling of security in the pressure of the bulldog against his ham. It seemed to Windy that he was enforced by that stubby weapon to the equal of any man that carried one more conspicuously. It made him so brave he would have stood up befote seven cowboys, confident that he was impervious as well as invincible with the bulldog in his hand.

A gun in the pocket gives a certain stripe of man that confident security and foolish self deceit that he

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 is brave. He believes he cannot possibly be harmed, while he sows damage as thick as the seeds of plague. A little piece of shooting-iron has given many a coward quite a respectable length of backbone.

Windy sat on the fence with Tom Laylander a long time after the other railroaders had gone off to their night's entertainment or repose. Windy had a feeling of guardianship over this boy, of responsibility as the leader in his defense. He determined to be right there in case anything happened; right where the public could see him for what he believed himself to be—a general in the conflict of life. It is not unusual that self-appointed officials are the most meticulous, not so much out of loyalty to the cause they serve, as in fear of being supplanted by someone more worthy if they turn their backs for a single breath.

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 ment by which purification is perfected is not made uncertain in its usefulness, by its being in the hands of one of our own party, or of a foreigner, if it possesses the attributes of truth. By these latter we mean those Ancients who investigated these things before the advent of Islam.

Now, such is the case. All that is wanted in an enquiry into philosophical reasoning has already been perfectly examined by the Ancients. All that is required of us is that we should go back to their books and see what they have said in this connection. If all that they say be true, we should accept it and if there be something wrong; we should be warned by it. Thus, when we have finished this kind of research we shall have acquired instruments by which we can observe the universe, and consider its general character. For so long as one does not know its general character one cannot know the cheated, and so long as he does net know the created, he can


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ANJO GIBSON said he had seen too much fighting and shooting in his time to go out hunting for any more. He remained at the hotel, comfortable in his wide shirt-sleeves, a little beeswax rubbed on his mustache to hold the points up and give him that touch of debonnaire romanticism which the small routine of his daily life did not entirely justify. Mrs. Cowgill and Goosie were taking the cool of the evening with him on the green benches beside the door.

Angus Valorous was on duty with his usual prominence, his black whiskers shaved as close as razor could press the skin, but springing again like a pest of the fields. Angus was pretty well keyed up by the prospect of a fight in town. He came out every few minutes, with a quick start and a sharp slam of the screen door behind him, as if he had heard a shot, to stand on the edge of the sidewalk and listen. Presently he would turn back to his desk again, laughing his little grunting horse-laugh in the very pleasure of his excited state.

Angus came out as Banjo Gibson was making his

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 speech about the troubles he had passed through and the bullets he had escaped. Burning as Angus was to tear off into the dark and find out what had happened or was going to happen to the cow jerry, nothing short of a raging battle could have drawn him away from his duty at the hotel.

Not so much that Angus was exceedingly loyal, as that he was inordinately egotistical. He believed the establishment depended on his clerkly services, which were mainly looking at the Police Gazette and waiting, behind the little counter at night. It was a poor, lame, tottering establishment which must be shored up by his dignity. The withdrawal of his effulgent presence for an hour during the night watches would throw it into chaos and hopeless ruin.

Banjo Gibson was not a favored person in the sight of Angus Valorous. Indeed, he despised the little musician for many reasons, most of them good enough reasons, too, for many a true bill would have lain against the care-free, laughing drone. Now, hearing him say he would not move a foot to learn what was going on around the depot, when he was free to go any minute without disaster smashing down behind him like a falling wall, Angus could not restrain a contemptuous snort. The sound nettled Banjo. He resented it as sharply as he would a clumsy foot on one of his brightly polished shoes.

"What're you gruntin' about? you big-headed chessie cat!" Banjo asked, with a sound like a fighting edge

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 on his voice, which Angus Valorous knew was nothing but the noise of a swelling bluff.

"All the fightin' you ever was in! You wouldn't fight a cracker!"

Goosie cackled suddenly, shrilly, over this witty taunt. Mrs. Cowgill's sense of humor was not as keen as her daughter's; she rebuked Angus for his impertinence.

"I'll not have you around here insultin' the guests," she declared.

Angus turned to her, his jaw slewed, his naturally contemptuous and lofty expression obscured by a snarl.

"Aw, what's it to you!" he said. "Let him stop insultin' me if he don't want to git his head knocked off!"

"If that kid gits any fresher," said Banjo discursively, as if he spoke in an aside for the public in general, "they'll have to split him and salt him down."

Goosie had another laugh, for she was an impartial young lady, to whom the refinements of wit from any source were irresistible.

"I don't want to hear any more of you insultin' the guests," Mrs. Cowgill corrected Angus again, in her sharp, hard manner of warning and threat. It was a sound so familiar in the ears of Angus that it did not cause the slightest fear for his important job.

Angus snorted, expressive of his disdain for both employer and guest, made one of his quick dashes indoors as if he had heard some kind of alarm. Presently Pap Cowgill came sauntering in his rolling, indolent: gait out of the dark from the direction of the depot.

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 "What're they doin' down there, Windy Moore and the rest of them?" Goosie inquired.

"Shootin' off wind," said Pap, with the lofty derogation of a consciously superior man.

"That's about all'll be shot off, too," said Banjo.

Pap slouched down beside Goosie, who pressed him for particulars. Mrs. Cowgill added her solicitations, but Pap was not to be moved out of his own time and pace. He grunted, a sound expressive of disparagement and slight, indicative of something that could be said by him to the unmasking of much human folly, took a cigar from his vest pocket and began to smoke.

"Herby, I wish you'd go easy on that Tulip Rose brand," his mother said fretfully. "That stock costs me twenty dollars a thousand."

"Guess all I smoke of 'em won't break you," said Pap.

"You can mighty soon smoke off the profit," she reproved him.

"Ain't I payin' my board?" Pap demanded of her with manly insolence.

"It don't include cigars. I'll have to add fifty cents a week extry if you keep on smokin' the way you do. Between you and your daddy I'll be smoked and eat out of house and home one of these days."

As if the mention of him had called him up like a beneficent genius, Myron set foot on the porch that moment. He would have gone in, according to his habit of withdrawing from the family presence, only that his wife hailed him in her sharp, up-catching way.

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 He sat on the bench near her, out of the light from the door.

"What did Cal Withers and the sheriff do about them cattle?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded.

There was a gritting sound coming from Myron's vicinity, together with a disquieting smell of concentrated nicotine. He was reaming the carbon out of his cob pipe, according to the custom of people whose tastes confine them to that humble vessel. Tardiness of reaction to any force was the outstanding peculiarity of Myron Cowgill, slowness of response being his most vexing weakness. He ground away on the cavity of his pipe, making no reply.

Whatever Myron's failures, fear of his wife was not among them. He was a calm man; no amount of tongue-lashing could whip him to a trot, no sharpbarbed burr of ridicule or censure under his saddle could make him rear and buck. He was not the kind of a man to be hung on his own testimony, if deliberation could save a man in that extremity.

"Did the sheriff make Tom give them cattle up to Withers, I asked you?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded.

Myron made a blowing in his pipe, a gurgling and distressing sound.

"Not that I heard of," he replied.

Louise Gardner was standing just inside the door, her hand put out to push it open, her attitude one of hesitant timidity, as if she might turn and fly at a word. She was dressed in white lawn with pink flowers sprayed through it, the skirt long and voluminous after

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 the fashion of that modest day. Angus Valorous thought she was pretty fair, although he liked them bulging a little more in places, his preference having been shaped by an intimate study of the Police Gazette.

Pap Cowgill must have felt the radiation of his adored through the screen door. He twisted on the bench and looked around, waved her a greeting with his Tulip Rose, and pushed Goosie along the bench to make room for her.

"Hello, Louise!" he hailed, a deferential eagerness in his slow voice. "Come on out and rest your hu-huhands and face."

Louise went out, laughing a little over Pap's pleasantry, as polite railroad society required in such case.

"Well, Louise, did you get rested up from your trip?" Mrs. Cowgill inquired, with the kindly note that softened her voice when she spoke to some people, notably Tom Laylander and Louise.

"I was so used up I took a sleep after supper," Louise replied.

"Folks always have to rest up and recover after a vacation," Myron said. "I knew a man back in Illinois—"

"You must 'a' took a vacation the same time he did, you've been restin' up ever since," Mrs. Cowgill interrupted him, quick to grasp this opportunity to slam Myron before the boarders.

There was a laugh, in which Banjo Gibson's gay and care-free voice rose loud, for nobody in the world appreciates a joke against a loafer like one of the craft.

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 Myron smoked on placidly, the reminiscence involving the man in Illinois unfinished, nobody enough interested in him to inquire of his adventure.

"We was just talkin' about Tom Laylander and them cattle," Mrs. Cowgill told Louise. "Did you hear Cal Withers was down there at the stock yards with the sheriff, tryin' to make him give 'em up?"

"No; I just came a minute ago," Louise said. "What did the sheriff do about it?"

"I've been tryin' to make these muck-heads tell me," Mrs. Cowgill said impatiently.

"He didn't do nothin'," said Pap, willing and eager to talk to Louise. "The cow jerry pulled out a bill of sale he said Withers give him for the cattle. Withers said he made him write it with a gun throwed down on him. The cow jerry tied him to a wagon wheel, Withers said, but somebody come along and turned him loose in time for him to throw the switch and head that feller in. It's a hu-hu-hell of a note if a feller can take a man's property away from him that way and never be touched."

"You say the sheriff wouldn't do anything?" Louise asked, glad for the shadow that concealed, in part at least, her trembling eagerness.

"Said it wasn't his kind of a case; said Withers he'd have to bring a lawsuit and take it into court."

"I wonder why he brought the cattle here to town?" said Louise, feeling very small and foolish for the part she had taken in assisting Withers to come there and

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