is brown spaniel. Waite
softly kissed each of them, so Kitty, who was half waking, told her
mother afterwards, and then, bethinking him that Catherine might not be
able to return in time for their breakfast, found the milk and bread,
and set it for them on the table. Catherine had been writing, and her
unfinished letter lay open beside the ink. He took up the pen and wrote,

"The childdren was all asleep at twelv.

"J. W."

He had not more than got on his pony again before he heard an ominous
sound that made his heart leap. It was a frantic dull pounding of
hoofs. He knew in a second what it meant. There was a stampede among
the cattle. If the animals had all been his, he would not have lost
his sense of judgment. But the realization that he had voluntarily
undertaken the care of them, and that the larger part of them belonged
to his friends, put him in a passion of apprehension that, as a
ranchman, was almost inexplicable. He did the very thing of all others
that no cattle-man in his right senses would think of doing. Gillispie
and Henderson, talking it over afterward, were never able to understand
it. It is possible--just barely possible--that Waite, still drunk on his
solitary dreams, knew what he was doing, and chose to bring his little
chapter to an end while the lines were pleasant. At any rate, he rode
straight forward, shouting and waving his arms in an insane endeavor to
head off that frantic mob. The noise woke the children, and they peered
from the window as the pawing and bellowing herd plunged by, trampling
the young steers under their feet.

In the early morning, Catherine Ford, spent both in mind and body, came
walking slowly home. In her heart was a prayer of thanksgiving. Mary
Deems lay sleeping back in her comfortless shack, with her little son by
her side.

"The wonder of God is in it," said Catherine to herself as she walked
home. "All the ministers of all the world could not have preached me
such a sermon as I've had to-night."

So dim had been the light and so perturbed her mind that she had not
noticed how torn and trampled was the road. But suddenly a bulk in her
pathway startled her. It was the dead and mangled body of a steer. She
stooped over it to read the brand on its flank. "It's one of the three
Johns'," she cried out, looking anxiously about her. "How could that
have happened?"

The direction which the cattle had taken was toward her house, and she
hastened homeward. And not a