hat was some calaboose, now, wasn't it?" A
moment later he inquired, ingenuously, "I don't suppose you ever saw
that Bastille, did you?"

"No. Only the place where it stood."

"Sho! You must have traveled right smart for such a young lady." He
beamed amiably upon her.

"I was educated abroad, and I only came home--to be married."

Law noted the lifeless way in which she spoke, and he understood. "I'll
bet you hablar those French and German lingoes like a native," he
ventured. "Beats me how a person can do it."

"You speak Spanish, don't you?"

"Oh yes. But I was born in Mexico, as near as I can make out."

"And you probably speak some of the Filipino dialects?"

"Yes'm, a few."

There was something winning about this young man's modesty, and
something flattering in his respectful admiration. He seemed, also, to
know his place, a fact which was even more in his favor. Undoubtedly he
had force and ability; probably his love of adventure and a happy lack
of settled purpose had led him to neglect his more commonplace
opportunities and sent him first into the army and thence into the
Ranger service. The world is full of such, and the frontier is their
gathering-place. Mrs. Austin had met a number of men like Law, and to
her they seemed to be the true soldiers of fortune--fellows who lived
purely for the fun of living, and leavened their days with adventure.
They were buoyant souls, for the most part, drifting with the tide,
resentful of authority and free from care; meeting each day with
enthusiastic expectancy for what it held in store. They were restless
and improvident; the world counted them ne'er-do-wells, and yet she
knew that at least their hours were full and that their names--some of
them--were written large in the distant places. Alaire Austin often
told herself that, had she been born a man, such a life as this might
have been hers, and she took pleasure in dreaming sometimes of the
experience that fate, in such a case, would have brought to her.

Being a woman, however, and being animated at this particular moment by
a peculiarly feminine impulse, she felt urged to add her own touch to
what nature had roughed out. This man had been denied what she termed
an education; therefore she decided to put one in his way.

"Do you like to read?" she asked him.

"Say! It's my favorite form of exercise." Law's blue-gray eyes were
expressionless, his face was bland. "Why?"

"I have a great many books at Las Pa