how repentant and sorrowful.

She turned quickly, and with a shy, teary smile thrust her hand toward him. "All right. Let's forget it." Then as he hungrily, impulsively sought to draw her nearer, she laughingly pushed him away. "I don't mean—so much as you think." But the light of forgiveness and something sweeter was in her face as she added: "Won't you come in a minute and see mother and father—and Uncle Dan?"

"I'm wild to see Uncle Dan," he replied with comical inflection, as he followed her slowly up the path.

[Pg 54]

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[Pg 55]

THE REMITTANCE MAN

[Pg 56]

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[Pg 57]

III

THE REMITTANCE MAN

I

The Kettle Hole Ranch house faces a wide, treeless valley and is backed by an equally bare hill. To the west the purple peaks of the Rampart 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 lack cleanliness or even comfort, and the young Englishman who rode over the hill one sunset was bitterly disappointed in the "whole plant."

"I shall stay here but one night," said he, as he entered the untidy house.

He stayed five years, and the cause of this change of mind lay in the person of Fan Blondell, the daughter of the old man who owned the ranch and to whom young Lester had been sent to "learn the bu