the long-stemmed pipe was alight. "I
shouldn't wonder if Boston had put some mighty queer notions into his
head."

The little lady looked up from her embroidery frame and a quaint smile
was twitching at the corners of the pretty mouth. "He is a dear boy, and
he is trying awfully hard to hate me," she said. "But I sha'n't let him,
David."

VI

ON THE WING OF OCCASIONS

From the time when it was heralded in the mammoth New Year's edition of
_The Plainsman_ as "the newest, the finest, and the most luxurious
hostelry west of the Missouri River," the Inter-Mountain Hotel, in the
Sage-brush capital, had been the acceptable gathering-place of the
clans, industrial, promoting, or political.

Anticipating this patronage, Clarkson, its bonanza-king builder and
owner, had amended the architect's plans to make them include a
convention-hall, committee-rooms, and a complete floor of suites with
private dining-rooms. Past this, the amended plans doubled the floor
space of the lobby--debating-ground dear to the heart of the country
delegate--and particular pains had been taken to make this semi-public
forum, where the burning question of the moment could be caucussed and
the shaky partisan resworn to fealty, attractive and home-like; the
plainly tiled floor, leather-covered lounging-chairs, and numerous and
convenient cuspidors lending an air of democratic comfort which was
somehow missing in the resplendent, bemirrored, onyx-plated bar,
blazing with its cut glass and polished mahogany.

After the solid costliness of Wartrace Hall and the thirty-mile spin in
a high-powered gentleman's roadster, which was only one of the three
high-priced motor-carriages in the Wartrace garage, Evan Blount was not
surprised to learn that his father was registered in permanence for one
of the private dining-room suites at the Inter-Mountain. It was amply
evident that the simple life which had been the rule of the "Circle-Bar"
ranch household had become a thing of the past; and though he charged
the new order of things to the ambition of his father's wife, he could
hardly cavil at it, since he was himself a sharer in the comforts and
luxuries.

For the first few days after the father and son had gone into bachelor
quarters at the Inter-Mountain, the returned exile was left almost
wholly to his own devices. Beyond giving him a good many introductions,
as the opportunities for them offered in the stirring life of the hotel,
his father mad