daughter’s body and he caught the sounds but did not make out the sense of words that passed between them. Then the two silhouettes swung apart and the boy laughed contentedly and flung an arm aloft in a parting salute and began singing a catch as he went teetering off toward the spot where his mates of the outfit already were making the low tilt of a tarpaulin roof above them pulse to some very sincere snoring. But before she betook herself to quarters, the girl bided for a long minute on the verge of the cliff and looked off and away into the studded void beyond her.

Mr. Gatling drew the flaps together in an abstracted way and mmphed several times.

“Pretty dog-gone spry-looking young geezer at that,” he remarked absently.

“Who?”

“Him.”

“You actually mean that cowboy?”

“None other than which.”

“Oh, Hector! That—that vulgarian, that country bumpkin, that clodhopper!”

“Now hold on there, Romola. Let’s try to be just even if we are prejudiced. All the clods that kid ever hopped you could put ’em in your eye without interfering with your eyesight. He’s no farm-hand; he’s a cow-hand or was before he got this job of steering tourists around through these mountains—and that’s a very different thing, I take it. And what he knows he knows blame’ well. I wish I could mingle in with a horse the way he does. When he gets in a saddle he’s riveted there but I only come loose and work out of the socket. And I’d give about five years off my life to be able to handle a trout-rod like he can. I claim that in his departments he’s a fairly high-grade proposition. He’s aware of it, too, but I don’t so much blame him for that, either. If you don’t think well of yourself, who else is going to?”

“Why, Hector Gatling, I believe you’re really—but no, you couldn’t be! Look at the difference in their stations! Look at their different environments! Look at their different viewpoints!”

“I’m looking—just as hard as you are. You don’t get what I’m driving at. I wouldn’t fancy having 

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