p in no time. She wanted
to work, but admitted that she had never done much housework. She said,
straight out, that they should never know more about her than they knew,
then; but insisted that she was not a bad woman. At first, Will and I were
against it for, of course, it was easy to see that she was trying to get
away from something. But the women--Nelly and my wife--somehow, believed
in her, and--with the baby due to arrive in a month and any kind of help
hard to get--they carried the day. Well, sir, she made good. If twenty
years acquaintance goes for anything, she's one of God's own kind, and I
don't care a damn what her history is.

"We soon saw that she was educated and refined, and--as you can see for
yourself--she must have been remarkably beautiful before she got so
disfigured. When the baby was born, she just took the little one into her
poor, broken heart like it had been her own, until Sibyl hardly knew which
was her own mother. When the girl was old enough for school, Myra begged
Will and Nelly to let her teach the child. She was always sending for
books and it was about that time that she sent for a violin. The girl took
to music like a bird. And--well--that's the way Sibyl was raised. She's
got all the education that the best of them have--even to French and
Italian and German--and she's missed some things that the schools teach
outside of their text-books. She has a library--given to her mostly by
Myra, a book at a time--that represents the best of the world's best
writers. You know what her music is. But, hell!"--the Ranger interrupted
himself with an apologetic laugh--"I'm supposed to be talking about Myra
Willard. I don't know as I'm so far off, either, because what Sibyl
is--aside from her natural inheritance from Will and Nelly--Myra has made
her.

"When Will was killed by those Mexican outlaws,--which is a story in
itself,--Nelly sold the ranch to the Power Company, and bought an orange
grove in Fairlands--which was the thing for her to do, as she and Myra
could handle that sort of property, and the ranch had to go, anyway.
Before Nelly died, she and I talked things over, and she put everything in
Myra's hands, in trust for the girl. Later, Myra sold the grove and the
house where you men live, now, and bought the little place next
door--putting the rest of the money into gilt-edged securities in Sibyl's
name; which insures the girl against want, for years to come. Sibyl helps
out their income wi