tions here are over, and we'll just throw that ground in
the river and forget it."

He might have taken the girl's hand in his as they sat together, but
instead he clasped his own hands gracefully and studied their fine
outlines.

"I have all the Darby estate in my own name now, you know, and I didn't
have to work a stroke at earning it. God! I wonder how a fellow can
stand it to work for every dollar he gets until he is comfortably fixed.
I simply filled in my banking-hours in a perfunctory way, and I didn't
kill myself at it, either. See what I have saved by it for myself and
you, and how much better my course was than yours, after all. Just three
years of waiting, and dodging all the drudgery I possibly could. And you
can just bet I'm a good dodger, Jerry."

Something like a chill went quivering through Jerry Swaim's whole being,
but the smile in her eyes seemed fixed there, as Eugene went on:

"Now if I had stuck to art, where would I have been and where would you
be right now? I've always wanted to paint the prairies. If I can stand
this blasted, crude country long enough, and if I'm not too lazy, we'll
play around here a little while, till I have smeared up a few canvases,
and then we'll go home, never to return, dear. Art is going to be my
pastime hereafter, you know, as it was once my--my--"

"Oh, never mind what it once was." Jerry helped to end the sentence.

The sunset on the Sage Brush was never more radiantly beautiful than it
was on this evening, and the long midsummer twilight gave promise of its
rarest grandeur of coloring. But a dull veil seemed to be slowly
dropping down upon Jerry's world.

Eugene Wellington looked at her keenly.

"Why, Jerry, aren't you happy to see me--glad for us to be together
again?" he asked, with just a tinge of sharpness edging his tones.

"I have looked forward to this meeting as a dream, an impossible joy. I
hardly realize yet that it isn't a dream any more," Jerry answered him.

"Say, cousin girl," Eugene Wellington exclaimed, suddenly, "I have been
trying all this time to find out what it is that is changed in your
face. Now I know. You have grown to look so much more like your father
than you did three years ago. Better looking, of course, but his face,
and I never noticed it before. Only you will always have your mother's
beautiful eyes."

"Thank you, Gene. They were, each in his and her way, good to me. I hope
I shall never put a stain upon their good names,