nterloping growth could
harden. Busy days for the short-handed milking crew; busy days of
installing the new milking-machines.

Judith and Doc Tripp had sought to find some trace of the man who,
Judith insisted, had listened at the door in the hall. They had found
nothing. So that episode, as well as Trevors himself, was shoved aside
in their minds, in the stress of activity demanding attention
everywhere.

With Saturday came Pollock Hampton and his guests. Trevors had
misnamed him a fool, sweepingly mistaking youth, business inexperience
and a careless way, for lack of brains. Just a breezy young fellow,
likable, gay-hearted, keen for the joy of life, scarcely more than a
boy after all. One of those rare beings whose attitude toward his
fellow mortals was one of generous faith, who sought to see the best in
people, who had an outspoken admiration for efficiency in any form. He
came to the ranch prepared to like everything and everybody.

"Look here!" he exclaimed to Judith, before she had had time for more
than a sweeping appraisal of his friends. "Why didn't you tell me you
were up to a thing like this? Great Scott, Judith, you don't know what
you are tackling, do you? It's ripping of you; you're a sheer wonder
to tie into it; you've got no end of nerve. But running a ranch like
this--why, it's a big proposition for a thunderingly big man to swing."

"Is it?" smiled Judith.

Beyond that, the only answer he got from this brief conference was the
timely suggestion that his chief concern for the immediate present lay
in making his guests comfortable.

Accompanying young Hampton were "Major" Langworthy, a little short,
fat, bald gentleman, who, so far as the knowledge of his club members
went, had never been connected with any part of the army or navy,
unless one counted his congenial brigades of cocktail drinkers; Mrs.
Langworthy, his supercilious, uninteresting wife; Marcia, his languidly
graceful daughter, in whom Hampton gave certain signs of being
considerably interested; Marshal Rogers, the Oakland lawyer, and Frank
Farris, the artist. Also Marcia's maid and Hampton's Japanese valet,
Fujioki. In due course of time this representative of the Flowery
Kingdom grew to be great friends with Jose, the two forthwith suspected
by Mrs. Simpson of all sorts of dark plots and of a racial sympathy
which must be watched lest it produce "something terrible."

Pollock Hampton, holding a third of the shares of