years before, when George
was a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was beginning to ride
the prairie with him. This boy was like George, yet not like him. The face
was George's, the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not those
of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate's family; and they were not
wholly like the mother's. They were full and brimming, while hers were
small and whimsical; yet they had her quick, humorous flashes and her
quaintness.

"Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten me?" Cassy asked, looking the
old man in the eyes. "You look as strong as a bull." She held out her hand
to him and laughed.

"Hope I see you well," said Abel Baragar, mechanically, as he took the
hand and shook it awkwardly.

"Oh, I'm all right," answered the nonchalant little woman, undoing her
jacket. "Shake hands with your grandfather, George. That's right--don't
talk too much," she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as the old
man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child shook hands in silence.

Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove. "Well, Andy, have you been
here ever since?" she asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly caught
him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. "Last time I saw you,
you were behind the stove at Lumley's. Nothing's ever too warm for you,"
she added. "You'd be shivering on the equator. You were always hugging the
stove at Lumley's."

"Things were pretty warm there, too, Cassy," he said, with a sidelong look
at his father.

She saw the look, her face flushed with sudden temper, then her eyes fell
on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself.

"There were plenty of things doing at Lumley's in those days," she said,
brusquely. "We were all young and fresh then," she added, and then
something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little--a hard,
dry, feverish cough. "Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there, at
the Forks?" she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing.

"Cleaned out--all scattered. We own the Lumleys' place now," replied Black
Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put some more
wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider, grimly watched
and listened.

"Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?" she asked, almost abstractedly.

"Jim's dead--shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler," answered
Black Andy, suggestively. "Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Je