s as
though they were very dry. All the time Seth's steady eyes were upon his
face, and the shadow of a smile was still about his lips.

At last Nevil looked up and Seth's eyes held his. For a moment the two men
sat thus. Then the wood-cutter handed back the photograph and shifted his
gaze.

"I've never seen the original of that about these parts," he said a little
hoarsely.

"I didn't figger you had," Seth replied, rising and proceeding to tighten
up the cinches of his saddle preparatory to departing. "The lawyer feller
gave me that. Y' see it's an old pictur'. 'Tain't as fancy as they do 'em
now. Mebbe I'll find him later on."

He had swung into his saddle. Nevil had also risen as though to proceed
with his work.

"It might be a good thing for him, since Rosebud is so well disposed,"
Nevil laughed; he had almost recovered himself.

"That's so," observed Seth. "Or a mighty bad thing. Y' can't never tell
how dollars 'll fix a man. Dollars has a heap to answer for."

And with this vague remark the plainsman rode slowly away.

CHAPTER XX

SETH PAYS

As the weeks crept by and the torrid heat toned down to the delightful
temperature of the Indian summer, news began to reach White River Farm
from England. After the first excitement of her arrival had worn off,
Rosebud settled down to a regular correspondence.

Even her return to the scenes of her childhood in no way aided her memory.
It was all new to her. As her letters often said, though she knew she was
grown up, yet, as far as memory served her, she was still only six years
old. Servants who had nursed her as a baby, who had cared for her as a
child of ten, aunts who had lavished childish presents upon her, cousins
who had played with her, they were all strangers, every one.

So she turned with her confidences to those she knew;--those old people on
the prairie of Dakota, and that man who had been everything to her. To
these she wrote by every mail, giving details of the progress of affairs,
telling them of her new life, of her pleasures, her little worries, never
forgetting that Ma and Pa were still her mother and father.

Thus they learned that the lawyer's prophecies had been fulfilled.
Rosebud was in truth her father's heiress. The courts were satisfied, and
she was burdened with heritage under certain conditions of the will. These
conditions she did not state, probably a girlish oversight in the rush of
events so swiftly passing round her.