Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her, resting one
hand on the muzzle of his grounded rifle

"Hurt? No," he murmured; "I'm just plain scared."

Bill stood before the fireplace, his shaggy fur cap pushed far
back on his head

NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER I

WHICH INTRODUCES A LADY AND TWO GENTLEMEN

Dressed in a plain white shirt waist and an equally plain black cloth
skirt, Miss Hazel Weir, on week days, was merely a unit in the office
force of Harrington & Bush, implement manufacturers. Neither in
personality nor in garb would a casual glance have differentiated her
from the other female units, occupied at various desks. A close
observer might have noticed that she was a bit younger than the others,
possessed of a clear skin and large eyes that seemed to hold all the
shades between purple and gray--eyes, moreover, that had not yet begun
to weaken from long application to clerical work. A business office is
no place for a woman to parade her personal charms. The measure of her
worth there is simply the measure of her efficiency at her machine or
ledgers. So that if any member of the firm had been asked what sort of
a girl Miss Hazel Weir might be, he would probably have replied--and
with utmost truth--that Miss Weir was a capable stenographer.

But when Saturday evening released Miss Hazel Weir from the plain brick
office building, she became, until she donned her working clothes at
seven A. M. Monday morning, quite a different sort of a person. In
other words, she chucked the plain shirt waist and the plain skirt into
the discard, got into such a dress as a normal girl of twenty-two
delights to put on, and devoted a half hour or so to "doing" her hair.
Which naturally effected a more or less complete transformation, a
transformation that was subjective as well as purely objective. For
Miss Weir then became an entity at which few persons of either sex
failed to take a second glance.

Upon a certain Saturday night Miss Weir came home from an informal
little party escorted by a young man. They stopped at the front gate.

"I'll be here at ten sharp," said he. "And you get a good beauty sleep
to-night, Hazel. That confounded office! I hate to think of you
drudging away at it. I wish we were ready to--"

"Oh, bother the office!" she replied lightly. "I don't think of it out
of office hours. Anyway, I don't mind. It doesn't tire me. I _will_
be ready at ten