f hers in the seat
with her--that Lance. And as they went past on the keen gallop--and
the horses both in a lather of sweat--the boy impudently shook his
fist at me where I was glancing from my window. And his mother lookit
and laughed, the Jezebel!"

"Mother, Lance only waved his hand."

"And why should Lance be waving his hand when he should pass the
house? Did he think that a Douglas would come so low as to wave at a
Lorrigan?"

Mary Hope ducked her sleek little pig-tailed head outside the door and
shooed vehemently at a dingy black hen that happened to be passing.
Mary Hope knew that a Douglas had stooped so low as to wave back at
Lance Lorrigan, but it seemed unwise to tell her mother so.

When Mary Hope was permitted to have a gentle old cow-pony of her own,
she rode as often as she dared to Devil's Tooth ridge. By short cuts
down certain washes which the trail avoided with many winding detours,
she could lope to the foot of the ridge in forty minutes by the old
alarm clock which she carried one day in her arms to time the trip.
She could climb by another shortcut trail, to the Devil's Tooth in
twenty minutes. She could come down in fifteen, she discovered. In a
three-hour ride she could reach the-Devil's Tooth, spend a whole hour
looking down upon the ranch house of the wicked Lorrigans, and ride
home again. And by choosing the short cuts she practically eliminated
the chance of being observed.

If she could see Belle go tearing down the trail with her bronks and
her buckboard she would be horrifiedly happy. The painted Jezebel
fascinated Mary Hope, who had read all about that wicked woman in the
Bible, and had shivered in secret at her terrible fate. Belle Lorrigan
might never be eaten by dogs, since dogs are few in cattleland and are
kept strictly at home, but if Mary Hope's mother was any true
prophetess, the painted Jezebel's final doom would be quite as
horrible.

At the infrequent parties which the Douglas household countenanced,--such
as Christmas trees and Fourth of July picnics, Mary Hope would sit and
stare fixedly at Belle Lorrigan and wonder if all painted Jezebels
were beautiful and happy and smiling. If so, why was unadorned virtue
to be commended? Mary tried not to wish that her hair was yellow and hung
in curls, and that she had even white teeth and could sing and dance so
wonderfully that everything stopped and every one looked and listened
from the minute she began until she stopped.