"Them?--you say 'them,' Daddy?" cried Isobel.

"Sure. Come and look for yourself. Guess Lafe is fixing Mr. Blake's
leg.--Which reminds me, honey, that before we left the ranch, Mrs.
Blake had me send for that lunger sawbones that's come to live at
Stockchute. He'll be here, I figure, before or soon after the boys get
Mr. Blake up into God's sunshine."

"Brother Tom, Daddy--you mean my Brother Tom!" joyfully corrected the
girl as she took the glasses.

"Well, you've got to give me time to chew on it, honey. It's come too
sudden for me to take it all in." He stood up and gazed gravely at the
smiling mother and her comforted baby. "Hum-m-m. Then that yearling is
my Chuckie's own blood nephew. Well, ma'am, what do _you_ think of it,
if I may ask?"

"Can't you make it 'Jenny,' Uncle Wes?" asked Genevieve.

He stared at her blankly. "But I didn't adopt him, ma'am--only her."

"He is the brother of your dear daughter, and I am his wife. Come
now," she coaxed, "you must admit that brings me near enough to call
you 'Uncle Wes.'"

"You've got me, ma'am--Jenny. I give in, I throw up the fight. That
irrigation project now--Chuckie's brother can have anything of mine he
asks for. Only there's one thing--you've got to make that yearling say
'Granddad' when he talks to me."

"O-oh!" cooed Genevieve. "To think you feel that way towards him! Of
course he shall say it. And I--Will you not allow me to make it
'Daddy'?"

He could not resist her enticingly upturned lips. He brushed down his
bristly mustache, and bent over awkwardly, to kiss his new daughter.

"Thought you were one of those super-high-toned ladies, m'm--Jenny,"
he remarked.

The cultured child of millions smiled up at him reproachfully. "What!
after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it's true there was a
time--before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish
and veneer, or the lack of polish and veneer."

Isobel, all her doubts and fears allayed, had risen from the
precipice's edge in time to hear Genevieve's reply. She added eagerly:
"Nor should men be judged by what they have been if they have become
something else--if they have climbed up--up out of the depths!"

"Belle! dear Sister Belle! Then he has proved it to you? Oh, I am so
glad for you! He has proved to you that he has climbed--to the
heights."

"To the very heights! I must tell Daddy. Give me Thomas. See, he is
fast asleep, the poor abused little darling! Go and watch the