ensation--the Faith Healer converted Laura Sloly.
Upon which Jansen drew its breath painfully; for, while it was willing to
bend to the inspiration of the moment, and to be swept on a tide of
excitement into that enchanted field called Imagination, it wanted to
preserve its institutions--and Laura Sloly had come to be an institution.
Jansen had always plumed itself, and smiled, when she passed; and even now
the most sentimentally religious of them inwardly anticipated the time
when the town would return to its normal condition; and that condition
would not be normal if there were any change in Laura Sloly. It mattered
little whether most people were changed or not, because one state of their
minds could not be less or more interesting than another; but a change in
Laura Sloly could not be for the better.

Her father had come to the West in the early days, and had prospered by
degrees until a town grew up beside his ranch; and though he did not
acquire as much permanent wealth from this golden chance as might have
been expected, and lost much he did make by speculation, still he had his
rich ranch left, and it and he and Laura were part of the history of
Jansen. Laura had been born at Jansen before even it had a name. Next to
her father she was the oldest inhabitant, and she had a prestige which was
given to no one else.

[Illustration: THE FAITH HEALER]

Everything had conspired to make her a figure of moment and interest. She
was handsome in almost a mannish sort of way, being of such height and
straightness, and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which more than a
few men had drowned themselves. Also, once she had saved a settlement by
riding ahead of a marauding Indian band to warn their intended victims,
and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life. Pioneers proudly told
strangers to Jansen of the girl of thirteen who rode a hundred and twenty
miles without food, and sank inside the palisade of the Hudson Bay
Company's fort, as the gates closed upon the settlers taking refuge, the
victim of brain fever at last. _Cerebro-spinal meningitis_, the doctor
from Winnipeg called it, and the memory of that time when men and women
would not sleep till her crisis was past was still fresh on the tongues of
all.

Then she had married at seventeen, and, within a year, had lost both her
husband and her baby, a child bereaved of her Playmates--for her husband
had been but twenty years old and was younger far than she in e