range are visible. It is a group of ramshackle and dispersed cabins-not Western enough to be picturesque, and so far from being Eastern as to

e night," said he, as he

on of Fan Blondell, the daughter of the old man who owned the ranch and to

harm. She had the face of a child-happy-tempered and pure-but every movement of her body appealed with dangerous directness to the sickly young Englishman w

hers of the early days, he was a Missourian, and his wife, big, fat, worried and complaining, was a Kentuckian. Neither of them had any fear of dirt, and Fan had grown up not merely unkempt, but smudgy. Her gown was greasy, her shoes untied, and yet, strange to say, this carelessness exercised a subduing charm over Lester, who was fastidious t

an; on the contrary, he was in most ways a gentleman and a man of some reading-but he lacked initiative, even in his villainy. Blondell at once called him "a lazy hound"-provoked thereto by

. "You better go slow; Ge

He couldn't unlimber his gu

he ca

ain, once he gets mounted, but he carries 'pajammys' in his saddle-b

fiantly. "We're all so blamed careless about the

ow hair brushed, trying hard to make each meal a little less like a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little, for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spick and span

tender, low-toned voice won her heart. She hovered about him when he was at home, careless of the comments of the other men, ignoring the caustic "slatting" of her mother. She had determined to win him, no matter what the father might say-for to her all

ueen, unafraid, unabashed. She was not in awe of Lester; on the contrary, her love for him was curiously mingled with a cer

h of him when he was most angry and disgusted with the life he was living. That he despised her father and mother she did not know, but that he was sick of the cowboys and their "clack" she did know, an

tand that he sought intellectual refuge from the mental squalor of the Blondells, but she perceived a difference in his glance on his

re or less born to the plains and farm-life, but you're not; you're just '

I know nothing of any art or profession, and my brother is quite content to pay my

er you stay the more difficult it will be to break away. Don't

k Starr to give me a place here with you, and I'm about to write my brother statin

nwhile, you can come over and stay as a visitor as long as you please-but don't bring Fan,"

asy. Fan has been mighty good to me; life woul

er," Mrs. Baker answered, with darkening brow, and then

k, which baffled and in the end overpowered him. She was adroit enough to make no mention of her rivals; she merely set herself to cause his committal, to bend him to her side. As the romping girl she played round him, indifferent to the warning glances of her mother, her e

s love (committing himself into her hands, declining into her life), an

. "What can you do for my girl?" he demanded. "As I understand it, you haven't a cent-the very clothes you

swer that he hoped soon to buy a ranch of his own-that his brother

haggy beard, said, calmly: "Now, dad, you hush! George Adelbert and I have made it all u

hich he was about to marry, but when Fan, turning with a gay laugh, put her