corduory riding-breeches, with boots that laced from the
ankle to the knee. These boots had that touch of the theatrical
which made him more fantastic than original in the eyes of his
fellow-citizens.

Also he wore a ring with a star-sapphire, which made him incongruous,
showy and foppish, and that was a thing not easy of forgiveness in the
West. Certainly the West would not have tolerated him as far as it did,
had it not been for three things: the extraordinary good nature which
made him giggle; the fact that on more than one occasion he had given
conclusive evidence that he was brave; and the knowledge that he was at
least well-to-do. In a kind of vague way people had come to realize that
his giggles belonged to a nature without guile and recklessly frank.

"He beats the band," Jonas Billings, the livery-stable keeper, had said
of him; while Burlingame, the pernicious lawyer of shady character, had
remarked that he had the name of an impostor and the frame of a fop;
but he wasn't sure, as a lawyer, that he'd seen all the papers in the
case--which was tantamount to saying that the Orlando nut needed some
cracking.

It was generally agreed that his name was ridiculous, romantic and
unreasonable. It seemed to challenge public opinion. Most names in the
West were without any picturesqueness or colour; they were commonplace
and almost geometric in their form, more like numbers to represent
people than things of character in themselves. There were names
semi-scriptural and semi-foreign in Askatoon, but no name like Orlando
Guise had ever come that way before, and nothing like the man himself
had ever ridden the Askatoon trails. One thing had to be said, however;
he rode the trail like a broncho-buster, and he sat his horse as though
he had been born in the saddle.--On this particular day, in spite of
his garish "get-up," he seemed to belong to the life in which he
was lightheartedly whistling a solo from one of Meyerbeer's operas.
Meyerbeer was certainly incongruous to the prairie, but it and the
whistling were in keeping with the man himself.

Over on Slow Down Ranch there lived a curious old lady who wore a bonnet
of Sweet Sixteen of the time of the Crimea, and with a sense of colour
which would wreck the reputation of a kaleidoscope. She it was who
had taught her son Orlando the tunefulness of Meyerbeer and Balfe and
Offenbach, and the operatic jingles of that type of composer. Orlando
Guise had come by his outward s