receive the money he had promised them, from
sheer pride in their manhood, and to keep their word, and now they
danced as determinedly.

There are no cramping conventions and very few shams--and the shams in
those forests, it must be confessed, are as a rule imported ones. In
fact, there was that evening, among all those in the pulp-mill, only
one man who seemed to disassociate himself from the general good-will.
That man was Waynefleet. He wore his old velvet jacket as a cloak of
superciliousness--or, at least, that was how it seemed to the
Bush-ranchers, who recognized and resented an effete pride in the
squeak of his very ancient lacquered shoes. It is possible that he did
not mean to make himself in any way offensive, and merely desired to
indicate that he was graciously willing to patronize their bucolic
festivities. There would have been something almost pathetic in his
carefully preserved dignity had it not been so obtrusively out of
place; and when they stood watching him for a moment or two, Gordon
expressed Nasmyth's thoughts.

"How a man of that kind ever came to be Laura Waynefleet's father is
more than I can figure out!" he said. "It's a question that worries me
every time I look at him. Guess she owes everything to her mother; and
Mrs. Waynefleet must have been a mighty patient woman."

Nasmyth smiled, but Gordon went on reflectively: "You folks show your
sense when you dump your freaks into this country," he said. "It never
seems to strike you that it's a little rough on us. What's the matter
with men like Waynefleet is that you can't teach them sense. I'd have
told him what I thought of him once or twice when I saw the girl doing
his work up at the ranch if I'd figured it would have made any
impression."

"I expect it would have been useless," remarked Nasmyth. "After all,
I'm not sure that it's exactly your business."

Gordon watched Laura Waynefleet as she swung through a waltz on the
arm of a sinewy rancher, and his eyes softened curiously.

"Only on the girl's account," he admitted. "I'm sorry for her. Stills
the blamed old image isn't actively unkind."

Then he saw the sudden contraction of Nasmyth's face, and turned
toward him. "Now," he said, "I want you to understand this thing. If
it would be any comfort to her, I'd let Miss Waynefleet wipe her boots
on me, and in one way that's about all I'm fit for. I know enough to
realize that she'd never waste a moment thinking of a man like me,
e