Justin Wingate, Ranchman

and Justin learned to look forward with pleasure to his coming. Always he stay

o do so. He averred to Fogg, and to other acquaintances, that, having been dropped down into Paradise Valley quite by chance, menta

and the writing, and the little glass slipping out of and into his pocket made the whole earth radiant with life and beauty. And Just

them close to the stream, where the low-lying soil was blest with sufficient sub-irrigation to swell the deep taproots of the alfalfa. They kept small herds of cattle, and some sheep, which they

of her mother in the farmer's home. Mrs. Jasper had given up the struggle with hard cli

of bellowing, half-wild cattle, and groups of brisk-riding, shouting cowboys, who rode down the

He fraternized with the cowboys, and struck up a warm friendship with Philip Davison's son Ben, a lively young fellow older than himself, who could ride a horse not only like a cowboy, but l

l of Mary's age, with more than Mary's charm of manner. She was paler than Mary, and had not her rose-leaf cheeks, but she was more beautiful in her way, and she had something which Mary lacked. Justin did

but she still cherished the romantic illusions of her earlier years, and kept them embalmed, as it were, in sundry fascinating volumes, which were warded and locked in her trunk up stairs. She brought these out at psychological moments, smelling sweetly of cedar and moth balls, and read from them, to Mary's great deli

ls of London," from "Lady Clare, or Lord Marchmont's Unhappy Bride," from "The Doge's Doom, or the Mysterious Swordsman of Venice," and many others. The mysterious swordsman in the "Doge's Doom" was especially entrancing, for he went about at nig

from his shining coat of mail and from the placid waters of the deep lagoon, showing in the pellucid waves alike the untamed locks that hung about his shoul

d succeed in getting the lovely maiden out of the clutches of the foul doge who held her a prisoner, or whether some guard concealed in a niche in the wall

olent romances with Mary Jasper for an appreciative listener, and that was the voice of Steve Harkness, the ranch foreman. The attraction of the printed page palled when she heard Harkness's heavy tones, and st

e was usually clean-shaven, scented himself sweetly with cinnamon drops, and was altogether very becoming, in the eyes of Pearl Newcome. And she knew he liked pie. Sometimes Pearl came back to the trunk and continued the dropped romance. That was when Harkness was in a

mself more than ever with his books and his writing, and was not to be coaxed out of his shell even by Jus

ess had been hurled against the new wire corral by a savage broncho, and Cla

in one of her hands and a blood-stained cloth in the other. Davison, Fogg, and several cowboys, stood about in helpless awkwardness. Harkness's face look

n. "I got slung up ag'inst the barbed wire and my arm was r

yton announced, when he had examined and cleanse

fer me," said Harkness, regarding him cur

lighted cigarette between his teeth, tal

ode or walked over to the ranch house to see how his patient was doing, or Harkness came over to see him. And he found that these people were good to kn