I.

The train which brought young Ramsey into Red Rock gave him no view of the mountains, because it arrived about eight o'clock of a dark day. He went to bed at once in order to be up early and prostrate himself before the peaks, for he was of the level middle-West.

He was awakened by the sound of loud, hearty voices, and looking out of the window saw a four-horse team standing before the little hotel. On the wagon's side was a sign which made the heart of the youth leap.

CRINKLE CREEK STAGE.
DAVE WILLIS, Pro.

He was in the land of gold! It was like a chapter from a story by Bret Harte. He dressed himself hurriedly, and went down and out into the cool, keen dawn, eager to catch a glimpse of the great peak whose name had been in his ear since a child, as the symbol of the Rocky Mountains.

There it soared, dull purple, splotched with dark green, and rising to white at its shoulders, and radiant with light on its crown. In such impassible grandeur, it must have loomed upon the eyes of the first little caravan trailing its way across the plains to the mysterious West.

He spent the day doing little else but gaze at the mountains and study the town.

It was also much more stupendous than he had imagined, and doubts of his ability to fit with all this splendor came to him with great force. He remembered the smooth, green swells and fertile fields he had left behind, and the memory brought a touch of homesickness.

After supper that evening he confided to the landlord his plans for finding a foreman's position on a stock farm.

"Well, I dunno. There are such places, but they're always snapped up 'fore you can say Jack Robinson."

"Well, I'm going to give it a good try," the young fellow said bravely.

"That's right. If I was you, I'd go out and see some of these real-estate fellers; they most always know what's going on."

"That's a good idea; much obliged. I'll tackle 'em to-morrow," said Arthur, and he went off to bed, feeling victory almost a tame bird in his hands.

The next forenoon he made his first attempt. He had determined on his speech, and he went into the first office with his song on his lips.

"I'm looking for a place on a dairy farm; I've had five years' practical experience, and am a graduate of the——Agricultural College. I'm after the position of bookkeeper and foreman."

The man looked at him gravely.

"You're aiming pretty high, young feller, for this country. There are plenty of chances to work, punching cattle, but I don't think chances are good for a foreman's place." He was a kindly man, and repented when he saw how the young man's face fell. "However, I'll give you some names of people to see."

On the whole, this was not so depressing, Arthur thought.

The next man made a mistake and took him for an investor. He rose with great cordiality.

"Ah, good morning, sir—good morning! Have a chair. Just in? Do you feel the draft there? Oh, all right!" Then he settled himself in his swivel chair and beamed his warmest. "Well, what do you think of our charming town?"

Arthur had not the heart to undeceive him, and so, saturated in agony sweat, crawled out at last, and went timidly on to the third man, who was kindly and interested in a way, and gave him the names of some ranchers likely to hire a hand. Some days passed in this sort of search and resulted in nothing materially valuable, but a strong quality came out in his nature. Defeat seemed to put a grim sort of resolution into his soul.

Following faint clews, Ramsey made long walks into the country, toiling from ranch to ranch over the dun-colored, lonely hills, dogged, persistent, with lips set grimly.

He was returning late one afternoon from one of these fruitless journeys. It was one of those strange days that come in all seasons at that altitude. The air was full of suspended mist—it did not rain, the road was almost dry under foot, and yet this all-pervasive moisture seemed soaking everything. It was, in fact, a cloud, for this whole land was a mountain top.

The road wound among shapeless buttes of red soil, the plain was clothed on its levels with a short, dry grass, and on the side of the buttes were scattering, scraggy cedars, looking at a distance like droves of cattle.

He sat down upon a little hummock to rest, for his feet ached with the long stretches of hilly road. The larks cried to him out of the mist, with their piercing sweet notes, cheerful and undaunted ever. There was a sudden lighting up of the day, as if the lark's song had shot the mist with silver light.

As he rose and started on with painful slowness, he heard the sound of horses' hoofs behind him, and a man in a yellow cart came swiftly out of the gray obscurity.

Arthur stepped aside to let him pass, but he could not help limping a little more markedly as the man looked at him. The man seemed to understand.

"Will you ride?" he asked.

Arthur glanced up at him and nodded without speaking. The stranger was a fine-looking man, with a military cut of beard, getting gray. His face was ruddy and smiling.

"Thank you. I am rather tired," Arthur said, as he settled into the seat. "I guess I'll have to own up, I'm about played out."

"I thought you looked foot-sore. I'm enough of a Western man to feel mean when I pass a man on the road. A footman can get very tired on these stretches of ours."

"I've tramped about forty miles to-day, I guess. I'm trying to find some work to do," he added, in desperate confidence.

"Is that so? What kind of work?"

"Well, I wanted to get a place as foreman on a ranch."

"I'm afraid that's too much to expect."

Arthur sighed.

"Yes, I suppose it is. If I'd known as much two weeks ago as I do now, I wouldn't be here."

"Oh, don't get discouraged; there's plenty of work to do. I can give you something to do on my place."

"Well, I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing here for me but the place of a common hand, so if you can give me anything——"

"Oh, yes, I can give you something to do in my garden. Perhaps something better will open up later. Where are you staying?" he asked, as they neared town.

Arthur told him, and the man drove him down to his hotel.

"I'd like to have you call at my office to-morrow morning; my partner does most of the hiring. I've been living in Denver. Here's my card."

After he had driven away, the listening landlord broke forth:

"You're in luck, Cap. If you get a place with Major Thayer you're fixed."

"Who is he, anyhow?"

"Who is he? Why, he owns all the land up the creek, and banks all over Colorado."

"Is that so?"

Arthur was delighted. Of course, it was only a common hand's place, but here was the vista he had looked for—here was the chance.

He stretched his legs under the table in huge content as he ate his supper. His youthful imagination had seized upon this slender wire of promise and was swiftly making it a hoop of diamonds.

II.

When he entered the office next day, however, the Major merely nodded to him over the railing and said:

"Good morning. Take a seat, please."

He seemed deeply engaged with a tall young man of about thirty-five years of age, with a rugged, smooth-shaven face. The young man spoke with a marked English accent, and there was a quality in his manner of speech which appealed very strongly to Arthur.

"Confeound the fellow," the young Englishman was saying, "I've discharged him. I cawn't re-engage him, ye kneow! We cawn't have a man abeout who gets drunk, y' kneow—it's too bloody proveoking, Majah."

"But the poor fellow's family, Saulisbury."

"Oh, hang the fellow's family," laughed Saulisbury. "We are not a poorhouse, y' kneow—or a house for inebriates. I confess I deon't mind these things as you do, old man. I'm a Britisher, y' kneow, and I haven't got intristed in your bloody radicalism, y' kneow. I'm in for Sam Saulisbury 'from the word go,' as you fellows say."

"And you don't get along any better—I mean in a money way."

"I kneow, and that's too deuced queeah. Your blawsted sentimentality seems note to do you any harm. Still I put it in this way, y' kneow—if he weren't so deadly sentimental, what couldn't the fellow do, y' kneow?"

The Major laughed.

"Well, I can't turn Jackson off, even for you."

"Well, deon't do it then—only if he gets drunk agine and drops a match into the milk can, fancy! and blows us all up, deon't come back on me, that's all."

They both laughed at this, and the Major said:

"This is the young man I told you about, Mr.—a——"

"Ramsey is my name," said Arthur, rising.

"Mr. Ramsey, this is my partner, Mr. Saulisbury."

"Haow de do," said Saulisbury, with a nod and a glance, which made Arthur hot with wrath, coming as it did after the talk he had heard. Saulisbury did not take the trouble to rise. He merely swung round on his swivel chair and eyed the young stranger.

Arthur was not thick-skinned, and he had been struck for the first time by the lash of caste, and it raised a welt.

He choked with his rage and stood silent, while Saulisbury looked him over, and passed upon his good points, as if he were a horse. There was something in the lazy lift of his eyebrows which maddened Arthur.

"He looks a decent young fellow enough; I suppeose he'll do to try," Saulisbury said at last, with cool indifference. "I'll use him, Majah."

"By Heaven, you won't!" Arthur burst out. "I wouldn't work for you at any price."

He turned on his heel and rushed out.

He heard the Major calling to him as he went down the stairs, but refused to turn back. The tears of impotent rage filled his eyes, his fists strained together, and the curses pushed slowly from his lips. He wished he had leaped upon his insulter where he sat—the smooth, smiling hound!

He was dizzy with rage. For the first time in his life he had been trampled upon, and could not, at least he had not, struck his assailant.

As he stood on the street-corner thinking of these things and waiting for the mist of rage to pass from his eyes, he felt a hand on his arm, and turned to Major Thayer, standing by his side.

"Look here, Ramsey, you mustn't mind Sam. He's an infernal Englishman, and can't understand our way of meeting men. He didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Arthur looked down at him silently, and there was a look in his eyes which went straight to the Major's heart.

"Come, Ramsey, I want to give you a place. Never mind this. You will really be working for me, anyhow."

Saulisbury himself came down the stairs and approached them, putting on his gloves, and Arthur perceived for the first time that his eyes were blue and very good-natured. Saulisbury cared nothing for the youth, but felt something was due his partner.

"I hope I haven't done anything unpardonable," he began, with his absurd, rising inflection.

Arthur flared up again.

"I wouldn't work for a man like you if I starved. I'm not a dog. You'll find an American citizen won't knuckle down to you the way your English peasants do. If you think you can come out here in the West and treat men like dogs, you'll find yourself mighty mistaken, that's all!"

The men exchanged glances. This volcanic outburst amazed Saulisbury, but the Major enjoyed it. It was excellent schooling for his English friend.

"Well, work for me, Mr. Ramsey. Sam knuckles down to me on most questions. I hope I know how to treat my men. I'm trying to live up to traditions, anyway."

"You'll admit it is a tradition," said Saulisbury, glad of a chance to sidle away.

The Major dismissed Saulisbury with a move of the hand.

"Now get into my cart, Mr. Ramsey, and we'll go out to the farm and look things over," he said; and Arthur clambered in.

"I can't blame you very much," the Major continued, after they were well settled. "I've been trying lately to get into harmonious relations with my employees, and I think I'm succeeding. I have a father and grandfather in shirt sleeves to start from and to refer back to, but Saulisbury hasn't. He means well, but he can't always hold himself in. He means to be democratic, but his blood betrays him."

Arthur soon lost the keen edge of his grievance under the kindly chat of the Major.

The farm lay on either side of a small stream which ran among the buttes and green mesas of the foothills. Out to the left, the kingly peak looked benignantly across the lesser heights that thrust their ambitious heads in the light. Cattle were feeding among the smooth, straw-colored or sage-green hills. A cluster of farm buildings stood against an abrupt, cedar-splotched bluff, out of which a stream flowed and shortly fell into a large basin.

The irrigation ditch pleased and interested Arthur, for it was the finest piece of work he had yet seen. It ran around the edge of the valley, discharging at its gates streams of water like veins, which meshed the land, whereon men were working among young plants.

"I'll put you in charge of a team, I think," the Major said, after talking with the foreman, a big, red-haired man, who looked at Arthur with his head thrown back and one eye shut.

"Well, now you're safe," said the Major, as he got into his buggy, "so I'll leave you. Richards will see you have a bed."

Arthur knew and liked the foreman's family at once. They were familiar types. At supper he told them of his plans, and how he came to be out there; and they came to feel a certain proprietorship in him at once.

"Well, I'm glad you've come," said Mrs. Richards, after their acquaintanceship had mellowed a day or two. "You're like our own folks back in Illinois, and I can't make these foreigners seem neighbors nohow. Not but what they're good enough, but, land sakes! they don't jibe in someway."

Arthur winced a little at being classed in with her folks, and changed the subject.

One Sunday, a couple of weeks later, just as he was putting on his old clothes to go out to do his evening's chores, the Major and a merry party of visitors came driving into the yard. Arthur came out to the carriage, a little annoyed that these city people should not have come when he had on his Sunday clothes. The Major greeted him pleasantly.

"Good evening, Ramsey. Just hitch the horses, will you? I want to show the ladies about a little."

Arthur tied the horses to a post and came back toward the Major, expecting him to introduce the ladies; but the Major did not, and Mrs. Thayer did not wait for an introduction, but said, with a peculiar, well-worn inflection:

"Ramsey, I wish you'd stand between me and the horses. I'm as afraid as death of horses and cows."

The rest laughed in musical uproar, but Arthur flushed hotly. It was the manner in which English people, in plays and stories, addressed their butler or coachman.

He helped her down, however, in sullen silence, for his rebellious heart seemed to fill his throat.

The party moved ahead in a cloud of laughter. The ladies were dainty as spring flowers in their light, outdoor dresses, and they seemed to light up the whole barnyard.

One of them made the most powerful impression upon Arthur. She was so dainty and so birdlike. Her dress was quaint, with puffed sleeves, and bands and edges of light green, like an April flower. Her narrow face was as swift as light in its volatile changes, and her little chin dipped occasionally into the fluff of her ruffled bodice like a swallow into the water. Every movement she made was strange and sweet to see.

She cried out in admiration of everything, and clapped her slender hands like a wondering child. Her elders laughed every time they looked at her, she was so entirely carried away by the wonders of the farm.

She admired the cows and the colts very much, but shivered prettily when the bull thrust his yellow and black muzzle through the little window of his cell.

"The horrid thing! Isn't he savage?"

"Not at all. He wants some meal, that's all," said the Major, as they moved on.

The young girl skipped and danced and shook her perfumed dress as a swallow her wings, without appearing vain—it was natural in her to do graceful things.

Arthur looked at her with deep admiration and delight, even while Mrs. Saulisbury was talking to him.

He liked Mrs. Saulisbury at once, though naturally prejudiced against her. She had evidently been a very handsome woman, but some concealed pain had made her face thin and drawn, and one corner of her mouth was set in a slight fold as if by a touch of paralysis. Her profile was still very beautiful, and her voice was that of a highly cultivated American.

She seemed to be interested in Arthur, and asked him a great many questions, and all her questions were intelligent.

Saulisbury amused himself by joking the dainty girl, whom he called Edith.

"This is the cow that gives the cream, ye know; and this one is the buttermilk cow," he said, as they stood looking in at the barn door.

Edith tipped her eager little face up at him:

"Really?"

The rest laughed again.

"Which is the ice-cream cow?" the young girl asked, to let them know that she was not to be fooled with.

Saulisbury appealed to the Major.

"Majah, what have you done with our ice-cream cow?"

"She went dry during the winter," said the Major; "no demand on her. 'Supply regulated by the demand,' you know."

They drifted on into the horse barn.

"We're in Ramsey's domain now," said the Major, looking at Arthur, who stood with his hand on the hip of one of the big gray horses.

Edith turned and perceived Arthur for the first time. A slight shock went through her sensitive nature, as if some faint prophecy of great storms came to her in the widening gaze of his dark eyes.

"Oh, do you drive the horses?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, for the present; I am the plowman," he said, in the wish to let her know he was not a common hand. "I hope to be promoted."

Her eyes rested a moment longer on his sturdy figure and his beautifully bronzed skin, then she turned to her companions.

After they had driven away, Arthur finished his work in silence; he could hardly bring himself to speak to the people at the supper table, his mind was in such tumult.

He went up into his little room, drew a chair to the window facing the glorious mountains, and sat there until the ingulfing gloom of rising night climbed to the glittering crown of white soaring a mile above the lights of the city; but he did not really see the mountains; his eyes only turned toward them as a cat faces the light of a hearth. It helped him to think, somehow.

He was naturally keen, sensitive, and impressionable; his mind worked quickly, for he had read a great deal and held his reading at command.

His thought concerned itself first of all with the attitude these people assumed toward him. It was perfectly evident that they regarded him as a creature of inferior sort. He was their servant.

It made him turn hot to think how terribly this contrasted with the flamboyant phraseology of his graduating oration. If the boys knew that he was a common hand on a ranch, and treated like a butler!

He came back for relief to the face of the girl, the girl who looked at him differently somehow.

The impression she made on him was one of daintiness and light; her eager face and her sweet voice, almost childish in its thin quality, appealed to him with singular force.

She was strange to him, in accent and life; she was good and sweet, he felt sure of that, but she seemed so far away in her manner of thought. He wished he had been dressed a little better; his old hat troubled him especially.

The girls he had known, even the daintiest of them, could drive horses and were not afraid of cows. Their way of talking was generally direct and candid, or had those familiar inflections which were comprehensible to him. She was alien.

Was she a girl? Sometimes she seemed a woman—when her face sobered a moment—then again she seemed a child. It was this change of expression that bewildered and fascinated him.

Then her lips were so scarlet and her level brown eyebrows wavered about so beautifully! Sometimes one had arched while the other remained quiet; this gave a winsome look of brightness and roguishness to her face.

He came at last to the strangest thing of all: she had looked at him, every time he spoke, as if she were surprised at finding herself able to understand his way of speech.

He worked it all out at last. They all looked upon him as belonging to the American peasantry; he belonged to a lower world—a world of service. He was brick, they were china.

Saulisbury and Mrs. Thayer were perfectly frank about it; they spoke from the English standpoint. The Major and Mrs. Saulisbury had been touched by the Western spirit and were trying to be just to him, with more or less unconscious patronization.

As his thoughts ran on, his fury came back, and he hammered and groaned and cursed as he tossed to and fro on his bed, determined to go back where the American ideas still held—back to the democracy of Lodi and Cresco.

III.

These spring days were days of growth to the young man. He grew older and more thoughtful, and seldom joked with the other men.

There came to the surface moods which he had not known before. There came times when his teeth set together like the clutch of a wolf, as some elemental passion rose from the depths of his inherited self.

His father had been a rather morose man, jealous of his rights, quick to anger, but just in his impulses. Arthur had inherited these stronger traits, but they had been covered and concealed thus far by the smiling exterior of youth.

Edith came up nearly every day with the Major in order to enjoy the air and beauty of the sunshine, and when she did not come near enough to nod to Arthur, life was a weary treadmill for the rest of the day, and the mountains became mere gloomy stacks of dÉbris.

Sometimes she sat on the porch with the children, while Mrs. Richards, the foreman's wife, a hearty, talkative woman, plied her with milk and cookies.

"It must be heaven to live here and feed the chickens and cows," the young girl said one day when Arthur was passing by—quite accidentally.

Mrs. Richards took a seat, wiping her face on her apron.

"Wal, I don't know about that, when it comes to waiting and tendin' on a mess of 'em; it don't edgicate a feller much. Does it, Art?"

"We don't do it for play, exactly," he replied, taking a seat on the porch steps and smiling up at Edith. "I can't stand cows; I like horses, though. Of course, if I were foreman of the dairy, that would be another thing."

The flowerlike girl looked down at him with a strange glance. Something rose in her heart which sobered her. She studied the clear brown of his face and the white of his forehead, where his hat shielded it from the sun and the wind. The spread of his strong neck, where it rose from his shoulders, and the clutch of his brown hands attracted her.

"How strong you look!" she said musingly.

He laughed up at her in frank delight.

"Well, I'm not out here for my health exactly, although when I came here I was pretty tender. I was just out of college, in fact," he said, glad of the chance to let her know that he was not an ignorant workingman.

She looked surprised and pleased.

"Oh, you're a college man! I have two brothers at Yale. One of them plays half-back or short-stop, or something. Of course you played?"

"Baseball? Yes, I was pitcher for '88." He heaved a sigh. He could not think of those blessed days without sorrow.

"Oh, I didn't mean baseball. I meant football."

"We don't play that much in the West. We go in more for baseball. More science."

"Oh, I like football best, it's so lively. I like to see them when they get all bunched up, they look so funny, and then when some fellow gets the ball under his arms and goes shooting around, with the rest all jumping at him. Oh, oh, it's exciting!"

She smiled, and her teeth shone from her scarlet lips with a more familiar expression than he had seen on her face before. Some wall of reserve had melted away, and they chatted on with growing freedom.

"Well, Edith, are you ready?" asked the Major, coming up.

Arthur sprang up as if he suddenly remembered that he was a workingman.

Edith rose also.

"Yes, all ready, uncle."

"Well, we'll be going in a minute.—Mr. Ramsey, do you think that millet has got water enough?"

"For the present, yes. The ground is not so dry as it looks."

As they talked on about the farm, Mrs. Richards brought out a glass of milk for the Major.

Arthur, with nice calculation, unhitched the horse and brought it around while the Major was detained.

"May I help you in, Miss Newell?"

She gave him her hand with a frank gesture, and the Major reached the cart just as she was taking the lines from Arthur.

"Are you coming?" she gayly cried. "If not, I'll drive home by myself."

"You mean you'll hold the lines."

"No, sir. I can drive if I have a chance."

"That's what the American girl is saying these days. She wants to hold the lines."

"Well, I'm going to begin right now and drive all the way home."

As they drove off she flashed a roguish glance back at Arthur—a smile which shadowed swiftly into a look which had a certain appeal in it. He was very handsome in his working dress.

All the rest of the day that look was with him. He could not understand it, though her mood while seated upon the porch was perfectly comprehensible to him.

The following Sunday morning he saddled up one of the horses and went down to church. He reasoned Edith would attend the Episcopal service, and he had the pleasure of seeing her pass up the aisle most exquisitely dressed.

This feeling of pleasure was turned to sadness by sober second thought. Added to the prostration before his ideal was the feeling that she belonged to another world—a world of pleasure and wealth, a world without work or worry. This feeling was strengthened by the atmosphere of the beautiful little church, fragrant with flowers, delicately shadowed, tremulous with music.

He rode home in deep meditation. It was curious how subjective he was becoming. She had not seen him there, and his trip lacked so much of being a success. Life seemed hardly worth living as he took off his best suit and went out to feed the horses.

The men soon observed the regularity of these Sunday excursions, and the word was passed around that Arthur went down to see his girl, and they set themselves to find out who she was. They did not suspect that he sought the Major's niece.

It was a keen delight to see her, even at that distance. To get one look from her, or to see her eyelashes fall over her brown eyes, paid him for all his trouble, and yet it left him hungrier at heart than before.

Sometimes he got seated in such wise that he could see the fine line of her cheek and chin. He noticed also her growing color. The free life she lived in the face of the mountain winds was doing her good.

Sometimes he went at night to the song service, and his rides home alone on the plain, with the shadowy mountains over there massed in the starlit sky, were most wonderful experiences.

As he rose and fell on his broncho's steady gallop, he took off his hat to let the wind stir his hair. Riding thus, exalted thus, one night he shaped a desperate resolution. He determined to call on her just as he used to visit the girls at Viroqua with whom he was on the same intimacy of footing.

He was as good as any class. He was not as good as she was, for he lacked her sweetness and purity of heart, but merely the fact that she lived in a great house and wore beautiful garments, did not exclude him from calling upon her.

IV.

But week after week went by without his daring to make his resolution good. He determined many times to ask permission to call, but somehow he never did.

He seemed to see her rather less than at first; and, on her part, there was a change. She seemed to have lost her first eager and frank curiosity about him, and did not always smile now when she met him.

Then, again, he could not in working dress ask to call; it would seem so incongruous to stand before her to make such a request covered with perspiration and dust. It was hard to be dignified under such circumstances; he must be washed and dressed properly.

In the meantime, the men had discovered how matters stood, and some of them made very free with the whole situation. Two of them especially hated him.

These two men had drifted to the farm from the mines somewhere, and were rough, hard characters. They would have come to blows with him, only they knew something of the power lying coiled in his long arms.

One day he overheard one of the men speaking of Edith, and his tone stopped the blood in Arthur's heart. When he walked among the group of men his face was white and set.

"You take that back!" he said in a low voice. "You take that back, or I'll kill you right where you stand!"

"Do him up, Tim!" shouted the other ruffian; but Tim hesitated. "I'll do him, then," said the other man. "I owe him one myself."

He caught up a strip of board which was lying on the ground near, but one of the Norwegian workmen put his foot on it, and before he could command his weapon, Arthur brought a pail which he held in his right hand down upon his opponent's head.

The man fell as if dead, and the pail shattered into its original staves. Arthur turned then to face Tim, his hands doubled into mauls; but the other men interfered, and the encounter was over.

Arthur waited to see if the fallen man could rise, and then turned away reeling and breathless. For an hour afterward his hands shook so badly that he could not go on with his work.

At first he determined to go to Richards, the foreman, and demand the discharge of the two tramps, but as he thought of the explanation necessary, he gave it up as impossible.

He almost wept with shame and despair at the thought of her name having been mixed in the tumult. He had meant to kill when he struck, and the nervous prostration which followed showed him how far he had gone. He had not had a fight since he was thirteen years of age, and now everything seemed lost in the light of his murderous rage. It would all come out sooner or later, and she would despise him.

He went to see the man just before going to supper, and found him in his barracks, sitting near a pail of cold water from which he was splashing his head at intervals.

He looked up as Arthur entered, but went on with his ministrations; after a pause he said:

"That was a terrible lick you give me, young feller—brought the blood out of my ears."

"I meant to kill you," was Arthur's grim reply.

"I know you did. If that darned Norse hadn't put his foot on that board you'd be doing this." He lifted a handful of water to his swollen and aching head.

"What did you go to that board for? Why didn't you stand up like a man?"

"Because you were swinging that bucket."

"Oh, bosh! You were a coward as well as a blackguard."

The man looked up with a gleam in his eye.

"See here, young feller—if this head——"

Arthur's face darkened, and the man stopped short.

"Now listen, Dan Williams, I want to tell you something. I'm not going to report this. I'm going to let you stay here till you're well, and then I want this thing settled with Richards looking on; when I get through with you, then, you'll want a cot in some hospital."

The man's eyes sullenly fell, and Arthur turned toward the door. At the doorway he turned and a terrible look came into his face.

"And, more than that, if you say another word about—her, I'll brain you, sick or well!"

As he talked, the old, wild fury returned, and he came back and faced the wounded man.

"Now, what do you propose to do?" he demanded, his hands clinching.

The other man looked at him, with a curious frown upon his face.

"Think I'm a damned fool!" he curtly answered, and sopped his handkerchief in the water again.

The rage went out of Arthur's eyes, and he almost smiled, so much did that familiar phrase convey, with its subtle inflections. It was cunning and candid and chivalrous all at once. It acknowledged defeat and guilt and embodied a certain pride in the victor.

"Well, that settles that," said Arthur. "One thing more—I don't want you to say what made the row between us."

"All right, pard; only, you'd better see Tim."

In spite of his care, the matter came to the ears of Richards, who laughed over it and told his wife, who stared blankly.

"Good land! When did it happen?"

"A couple of days ago."

"Wal, there! I thought there was a nigger in the fence. Dan had a head on him like a bushel basket. What was it about?"

"Something Tim said about Edith."

"I want to know! Wal, wal! An' here they've been going around as peaceful as two kittens ever since."

"Of course. They pitched in and settled it man fashion; they ain't a couple of women who go around sniffin' and spittin' at each other," said Richards, with brutal sarcasm. "As near as I can learn, Tim and Dan come at him to once."

"They're a nice pair of tramps!" said Mrs. Richards indignantly. "I told you when they come they'd make trouble."

"I told you the cow'd eat up the grindstone," Richards replied with a grin, walking away.

The more Mrs. Richards thought of it, the finer it all appeared to her. She was deeply engaged now on Arthur's side, and was very eager to do something to help on in his "sparking," as she called it. She seized the first opportunity to tell Edith.

"Don't s'pose you heard of the little fracas we had t'other day," she began, in phrase which she intended to be delicately indirect.

Edith was sitting in the cart, and Mrs. Richards stood at the wheel, with her apron shading her head.

"Why, no. What was it?"

"Mr. Ramsey come mighty near gettin' killed." The old woman enjoyed deeply the dramatic pallor and distortion of the girl's face.

"Why—why—what do you mean?"

"Wal, if he hadn't a lammed one feller with a bucket he'd a been laid out sure. So Richards says; as it is, it's the other feller that has the head." She laughed to see the girl's face grow rosy again.

"Then—Mr. Ramsey isn't hurt?"

"Not a scratch! The funny part of it is, they've been going around here for a week, quiet as you please. I wouldn't have known anything about it only for Richards."

"Oh, isn't it dreadful?" said the girl.

"Yes, 'tis!" the elder woman readily agreed; "but why don't you ask what it was all about?"

"Oh, I don't want to know anything more about it; it's too terrible."

Mrs. Richards was approaching the climax.

"It was all about you."

The girl could not realize what part she should have with a disgraceful row in the barnyard of her uncle's farm.

"Yes, these men—they're regular tramps; I told Richards so the first time I set eyes on 'em—they made a little free with your name, and Art he overheard them and he went for 'em, and they both come at him, two to one, and he lammed both out in a minute—so Richards says. Now I call that splendid; don't you? A young feller that'll stand up for his girl ag'in two big tramps——"

The Major had been motioning for Edith to drive on down toward the gate, and she seized the chance for escape. Her lips quivered with shame and anger. It seemed already as if she had been splashed with mire.

"Oh, the vulgar creatures!" she said, in her throat, her teeth shut tight.

"There, isn't that a fine field?" asked the Major, as he pointed to the cabbages. "There is a chance for an American imitator of Monet—those purple-brown deeps and those gray-blue-pink pearl tints—What's the matter, my dear?" he broke off to ask. "Are you ill?"

"No, no, only let's go home," she said, the tears coming into her eyes.

He got in hastily.

"My dear, you are really ill. What's the matter? Has your old enemy the headache—" He put his arm about her tenderly.

"No, no! I'm sick of this place—I wish I'd never seen it! How could those dreadful men fight about me? It's horrible!"

The Major whistled.

"Oh, ho! that's got around to you, has it? I didn't know it myself until yesterday; I was hoping it wouldn't reach you at all. I wouldn't mind it, my dear. It's the shadow every lovely woman throws, no matter where she walks; it's only your shadow that has passed over the cesspool."

"But I can't even bear that; it seems like a part of me. What do you suppose they said of me?" she asked, in morbid curiosity.

"Now, now, dearest, to know that would be stepping into the muck after your shadow; the talk of such men is unimaginable to you."

"You don't mean Mr. Ramsey?"

"No; Mr. Ramsey is a different sort of man, and I don't suppose anything else would have brought him to blows with those rough men."

They sat looking straight forward.

"Oh, it's horrible, horrible!"

Her uncle tightened his arm about her.

"I suppose the knowledge of such lower deeps must come to you some day, but don't seek it now; I've told you all you ought to know. Ramsey meant well," he went on, after a silence, "but such things do little good, not enough to pay for the outlay of self-respect. He can't control their talk when he's out of hearing."

"But I supposed that if a woman was—good—I mean—I didn't know that men talked in that way about girls—like me. How could they?"

The abyss still fascinated her.

"My dear, such men are only half civilized. They have all the passions of animals, and all the vices of men. Ramsey was too hot-headed; their words do not count; they weren't worth whipping."

There was a little silence. They were nearing the mountains again, and both raised their eyes to the peaks deeply shadowed in Tyrian purple.

"I know how you feel, I think," the Major went on, "but the best thing to do is to forget it. I'm sorry Ramsey fought. To walk into a gang of rough men like that is foolish and dangerous too, for the ruffian is generally the best man physically, I'm sorry to say."

"It was brave, though, don't you think so?" she asked.

He looked at her quickly.

"Oh, yes; it was brave and very youthful."

She smiled a little for the first time.

"I guess I like youth."

"In that case I'll have to promote him for it," he said with a smile that made her look away toward the mountains again.

V.

Saulisbury took a sudden turn to friendliness, and defended the action when the Major related the story that night at the dinner table, as they were seated over their coffee and cigars. He was dining with the Saulisburys.

"It's uncommon plucky, that's what I think, d'ye kneow. By Jeove, I didn't think the young dog had it in him, really. He did one fellow up with a bucket, they say, and met the other fellow with his left. Where did the young beggah get his science?"

"At college, I suppose."

"But I suppeosed these little Western colleges were a milk-and-wahta sawt of thing, ye kneow—Baptist and Christian Endeavor, and all that, ye kneow."

"Oh, no," laughed the Major. "They are not so benighted as that. They give a little attention to the elementary studies, though I believe athletics do come second on the curriculum."

"Well, the young dog seems to have made some use of his chawnce," said Saulisbury, who had dramatized the matter in his own way, and saw Ramsey doing the two men up in accordance with Queensberry rules. "I wouldn't hawf liked the jobe meself, do ye kneow. They're forty years apiece, and as hard as nails."

Mrs. Saulisbury looked up from her walnuts.

"Sam is ready to carry the olive club to Mr. Ramsey. 'The poor beggar,' as he has called him all along, will be a gentleman from this time forward."

After the Major had gone, Saulisbury said:

"There's one thing the Majah was careful note to mention, my deah. Why should this young fellow be going abeout defending the good name of his niece? Do ye kneow, my deah, I fancy the young idiot is in love with her."

"Well, suppose he is?"

"But, my deah! In England, you kneow, it wouldn't mattah; it would be a case of hopeless devotion. But as I understand things heah, it may become awkward. Don't ye think so, love?"

"It depends upon the young man. Edith could do worse than marry a good, clean, wholesome fellow like that."

"Good gracious! You deon't allow your mind to go that fah?"

"Why, certainly! I'd much rather she'd marry a strong young workingman than some burnt-out third-generation wreck of her own set in the city."

"But the fellow has no means."

"He has muscle and brains, and besides, she has something of her own."

Saulisbury filled his pipe slowly.

"Luckily, it's all theory on our part; the contingency isn't heah—isn't likely to arrive, in fact."

"Don't be too sure. If I can read a girl's heart in the lines of her face, she's got where principalities and powers are of small account."

"Really?"

"Sure as shooting," she smilingly said.

Saulisbury mused and puffed.

"In that case, we will have to turn in and give the fellow what you Americans call a boost."

"That's right," his wife replied slangily.

Edith went to her room that night with a mind whirling in dizzying circles, whose motion she could not check. It was terrible to have it all come in this way.

She knew Arthur cared for her—she had known it from the first—but with the happy indifference of youth, she had not looked forward to the end of the summer. The sure outcome of passion had kept itself somewhere in a golden glimmer on the lower sweep of the river.

She wished for some one to go to for advice. Mrs. Thayer, she knew, would exclaim in horror over the matter. The Major had hinted the course she would have to take, which was to show Arthur he had no connection with her life—if she could. But deep in her heart she knew she could not do that.

Suddenly a thought came to her which made her flush till the dew of shame stood upon her forehead. He had never been to see her; she had always been to see him!

She knew that this was true. She did not attempt to conceal it from herself now. The charm of those rides with her uncle was the chance of seeing Arthur. The sweet, never-wearying charm that made this summer one of perfect happiness, that had made her almost forget her city ways and friends, that had made her brown and strong with the soil and wind, was daily contact with a robust and wholesome young man, a sturdy figure with brown throat and bare, strong arms.

She went off at this point into a retrospective journey along the pathways of her summer outing. At this place he stood at the watering trough, leaning upon his great gray horse. Here he was walking behind his plow; he was lifting his hat—the clear sunshine fell over his face. She saw again the splendid flex of his side and powerful thigh. Here he was in the hayfield, and she saw the fork-handle bend like a willow twig under his smiling effort, the muscles on his brown arms rolling like some perfect machinery. She idealized all he did, and the entire summer and the wide landscape seemed filled with prismatic colors.

Then her self-accusations came back. She had gone down into the field to see him; perhaps the very man who was with him then was one of those who had jested of her and whom he had punished. Her little hands clutched.

"I'll never go out there again! I'll never see him again—never!" she said, with her teeth shut tight.

Mrs. Thayer did not take any very great interest in the matter until Mrs. Saulisbury held a session with her. Then she sputtered in deep indignation.

"Why, how dare he make love to my niece? Why, the presumptuous thing! Why, the idea! He's a workingman!"

Mrs. Saulisbury remained calm and smiling. She was the only person who could manage Mrs. Thayer.

"Yes, that's true. But he's a college-bred man, and——"

"College-bred! These nasty little Western colleges—what do they amount to? Why, he curries our horses."

Mrs. Saulisbury was amused.

"I know that is an enormity, but I heard the Major tell of currying horses once."

"That was in the army—anyhow, it doesn't matter. Edith can simply ignore the whole thing."

"I hope she can, but I doubt it very much."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Edith is interested in him."

"I don't believe it! Why, it is impossible! You're crazy, Jeannette!"

"He's very handsome in a way."

"He's red and big-jointed, and he's a common plowboy." Mrs. Thayer gasped, returning to her original charge.

Mrs. Saulisbury laughed, being malevolent enough to enjoy the whole situation.

"He appears to me to be a very uncommon plowboy. Well, I wouldn't try to do anything about it, Charlotte," she added. "You remember the fate of the Brookses, who tried to force Maud to give up her clerk. If this is a case of true love, you might as well surrender gracefully."

"But I can't do that. I'm responsible for her to her father. I'll go right straight and ask her."

"Charlotte," Mrs. Saulisbury's voice rang with a stern note, "don't you presume to do such a thing! You will precipitate everything. The girl don't know her own mind, and if you go up there and attack this young man, you'll tip the whole dish over. Don't you know you can't safely abuse that young fellow in her hearing? Sit down now and be reasonable. Leave her alone for a while. Let her think it over alone."

This good counsel prevailed, and the other woman settled into a calmer state.

"Well, it's a dreadful thing, anyhow."

"Perfectly dreadful! But you mustn't take a conventional view of it. You must remember, a good, handsome, healthy man should come first as a husband, and this young man is very attractive, and I must admit he seems a gentleman, so far as I can see. Besides, you can't do anything by storming up to that poor girl. Let her alone for a few days."

Following this suggestion, no one alluded to the fight, or appeared to notice Edith's changed moods, but Mrs. Saulisbury could not forbear giving her an occasional squeeze of wordless sympathy, as she passed her.

It was pitiful to see the tumult and fear and responsibility of the world coming upon this dainty, simple-hearted girl. Life had been so straightforward before. No toil, no problems, no choosing of things for one's self. Now suddenly here was the greatest problem of all coming at the end of a summer-time outing.

Meanwhile Arthur was longing to see Edith once more, and wondering why she had stopped coming.

The Major came up on Friday and Saturday, but came alone, and that left only the hope of seeing Edith at church, and the young fellow worked on with that to nerve his arm.

The family respected his departure on Sunday. They plainly felt his depression, and sympathized with it.

"Walk home with her. I would," said Mrs. Richards, as he went through the kitchen.

"So would I. Dang me if I'd stand off," Richards started to say, but Arthur did not stop to listen.

As he rode down to the city, he recovered, naturally, a little of his buoyancy. Sleep had rested his body and cleared his mind for action.

He sat in his usual place at the back of the church, and his heart throbbed painfully as he saw her moving up the aisle, a miracle of lace and coolness, with fragrant linen enveloping her lovely young form, so erect and graceful and slender.

Then his heart bowed down before her, not because she was above him in a social class—he did not admit that—but because he was a lover, and she was his ideal. He was cast down as suddenly as he had been exalted by her timid look around, as was her custom, in order to bow to him.

He stood at the door as they came out, though he felt foolish and boyish in doing so. She approached him with eyes turned away; but as she passed him she flashed an appealing, mystical look at him, and, flushing a radiant pink, slipped out of the side door, leaving him stunned and smarting for a moment.

As he mounted his horse and rode away toward the ranch, his thoughts were busy with that strange look of hers. He came to understand and to believe at last that she appealed to him and trusted in him and waited for him.

Then something strong and masterful rose in him. He lifted his big brown fist in the air in a resolution which was like that of Napoleon when he entered Russia. He turned and rode furiously back toward the town.

As he walked up the gravel path to the Thayer house it seemed like a castle to him. The great granite portico, the curving flight of steps, the splendor of the glass above the door, all impressed him with the terrible gulf between his fortune and hers.

He was met at the door by the girl from the table. He greeted her as his equal, and said:

"Is Miss Newell at home?"

The girl smiled with perfect knowledge and sympathy. She was on his side; and she knew, besides, how much it meant to have the hired man come in at the front door.

"Yes, she's at dinner. Won't you come in, Mr. Ramsey?"

He entered without further words, and followed her into the reception room, which was the most splendid room he had ever seen. He stood with his feet upon a rug which was worth more than his year's pay, and he knew it.

"Just take a seat here, and I'll announce you," said the girl, who was almost trembling with eagerness to explode her torpedo of news.

"Don't disturb them. I'll wait."

But she had whisked out of the room, having plans of her own; perhaps revenges of her own.

Arthur listened. He could not help it. He heard the girl's clear, distinct voice; the open doorways conveyed every word to him.

"It's Mr. Ramsey, ma'am, to see Miss Newell."

The young man's strained ears heard the sudden pause in the click of knives and plates. He divined the gasps of astonishment with which Mrs. Thayer's utterance began.

"Well, I declare! Now, Major, you see what I told you?"

"The plucky young dog!" said Saulisbury, in sincere admiration.

Mrs. Thayer went on:

"Now, Mr. Thayer, this is the result of treating your servants as equals."

The Major laughed.

"My dear, you're a little precipitate. It may be a mistake. The young man may be here to tell me one of the colts is sick."

"You don't believe any such thing! You heard what the girl said—Oh, look at Edith!"

There was a sudden pushing and scraping of chairs. Arthur rose, tense, terrified. A little flurry of voices followed.

"Here, give her some wine! The poor thing! No wonder——"

Then a slight pause.

"She's all right," said the Major in a relieved tone. "Just a little surprised, that's all."

There came a little inarticulate murmur from the girl, and then another pause.

"By Jove! this is getting dramatic!" said Saulisbury.

"Be quiet, Sam," said his wife. "I won't have any of your scoffing. I'm glad there is some sincerity of emotion left in our city girls."

Mrs. Thayer broke in:

"Major, you go right out there and send that impudent creature away. It's disgraceful!"

Arthur turned cold and hard as granite. His heart rose with a murderous, slow swell. He held his breath, while the calm, amused voice of the Major replied:

"But, see here, my dear, it's none of my business. Mr. Ramsey is an American citizen—I like him—he has a perfect right to call——"

"H'yah, h'yah!" called Saulisbury in a chuckle.

"He's a man of parts, and besides, I rather imagine Edith has given him the right to call."

The anger died out of Arthur's heart, and the warm blood rushed once more through his tingling body. Tears came to his eyes, and he could have embraced his defender.

"Nothing like consistency, Majah," said Saulisbury.

"Sam, will you be quiet?"

The Major went on:

"I imagine the whole matter is for Edith to decide. It's really very simple. Let her send word to him that she does not care to see him, and he'll go away—no doubt of it."

"Why, of course," said Mrs. Thayer. "Edith, just tell Mary to say to Mr. What's-his-name——"

Again that creeping thrill came into the young man's hair. His world seemed balanced on a needle's point.

Then a chair was pushed back slowly. There was another little flurry. Again the blood poured over him like a splash of warm water, leaving him cold and wet.

"Edith!" called the astonished, startled voice of Mrs. Thayer. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to see him," said the girl's firm voice.

There was a soft clapping of two pairs of hands.

As she came through the portiÈre, Edith walked like a princess. There was amazing resolution in her back-flung head, and on her face was the look of one who sets sail into unknown seas.

Someway—somehow, through a mist of light and a blur of sound, he met her—and the cling of her arms about his neck moved him to tears.

No word was uttered till the Major called from the doorway:

"Mr. Ramsey, Mrs. Thayer wants to know if you won't come and have some dinner."