ching, saw fit to accost him familiarly.

"The last time I saw you dealing poker in Sacramento, Mr. Hamlin, I did
not reckon to find you up here playing with a couple of kids."

"No!" responded Mr. Hamlin suavely, "and yet I remember I was playing
with some country idiots down there, and you were one of them. Well!
understand that up here I prefer the kids. Don't let me have to remind
you of it."

Nevertheless, Mr. Hamlin could not help noticing that for the next
two or three days there were many callers at the ranch and that he was
obliged in his walks to avoid the highroad on account of the impertinent
curiosity of wayfarers. Some of them were of that sex which he would not
have contented himself with simply calling "curious."

"To think," said Melinda confidently to her mistress, "that that thar
Mrs. Stubbs, who wouldn't go to the Hightown Hotel because there was a
play actress thar, has been snoopin' round here twice since that young
feller came."

Of this fact, however, Mr. Hamlin was blissfully unconscious.

Nevertheless, his temper was growing uncertain; the angle of his smart
straw hat was becoming aggressive to strangers; his politeness sardonic.
And now Sunday morning had come with an atmosphere of starched piety and
well-soaped respectability at the rancho, and the children were to be
taken with the rest of the family to the day-long service at Hightown.
As these Sabbath pilgrimages filled the main road, he was fain to take
himself and his loneliness to the trails and byways, and even to invade
the haunts of some other elegant outcasts like himself--to wit, a
crested hawk, a graceful wild cat beautifully marked, and an eloquently
reticent rattlesnake. Mr. Hamlin eyed them without fear, and certainly
without reproach. They were not out of their element.

Suddenly he heard his name called in a stentorian contralto. An
impatient ejaculation rose to his lips, but died upon them as he turned.
It was certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive loneliness it
struck him for the first time that he had never actually seen her before
as she really was. Like most men in his profession he was a quick reader
of thoughts and faces when he was interested, and although this was the
same robust, long-limbed, sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to see
through her triple incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety,
and outrageous Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity that
commanded his respect.