f course. All right. I'm willing
she should stay with us awhile, but how can _she_ live on a Sage Brush
claim? Why doesn't her rich aunt Darby provide for her? What does she
look like?"

"I don't know," York drawled, provokingly. Then he added: "Mrs. Darby
also writes, saying that she hopes we will look after Jerry while she is
here, but that she herself can do nothing for her niece, because a
relative of her dear deceased husband, an artist of merit but no means,
is dependent on her, and she owes it to her dear deceased's memory to
look after this young man. I've a notion that there is something back of
both letters, but I haven't had time to read behind the lines yet."

"Turns out her own flesh and blood, a girl, too, to shift for herself,
and coddles this man, this artist thing, for her dear deceased's sake.
What _do_ you think of that?" Laura burst out.

"I don't think of that," York replied. "Not really knowing any woman but
my sister, I can't judge them by the sample. Besides, this 'girl thing'
may have elected to come to the Sage Brush herself; that would be like
Jim Swaim. Or she may be making a lark of the trip; that's her mother's
child. And, anyhow, she has property in her own name, you see."

"Property, bosh! Where is this precious claim that is to sustain this
luxuriously reared child?" Laura Macpherson insisted.

"It is an undeveloped claim down the Sage Brush, in a part of the
country you haven't seen yet. That is what this child of luxury has come
out for to live upon," York said, with a minor chord of anxiety in his
voice.

Then a silence fell, for Laura Macpherson felt that something tragical
must be bound up in the course of coming events.

It was the poet's hour of "nearly dark." The "high lights" were
beginning to gleam from the cupola of the court-house and high-school,
and station tower out across the open stretch that lay between it and
the town. New Eden was unusually well lighted for its size. York
Macpherson had forced that provision into the electric company's
franchise. But New-Edenites were still rural in their ways, and never
burned up the long summer twilight with bug-alluring street lights.
Homes, too, were mostly shadowy places, with the dwellers resting in
porch swings or lawn chairs. Moreover, although there was a little
leakage somewhere through which things disappeared occasionally, nobody
in town except bankers, postmasters, and mortgage companies locked their
doors. The ja