ure
tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most difficult thing and
looked in every direction but Miss Carmichael's. With a delicacy of
perception that the casual observer might not have given them credit for,
they had refrained from taking seats directly opposite her, or those
immediately on her right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the
table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.

As one after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a
beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could
obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair
opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a
hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the
cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," as the case
might be, would take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat
separated from the sombreros by a table-land of oilcloth and a range of
four chairs.

But now entered a man who failed to take the hint of the spinning chair.
In fact, he entered the eating-house with the air of one who has dropped
in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast.
He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and
started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a
swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table.
Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and
the Texan remarked, quite audibly, as he passed:

"The damned razor-back!"

But the man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair
opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the
rest of the table into a pretty pother.

Suppose she should countenance his audacity? The fair have been known to
succumb to the headlong force of a charge, when the persistence of a long
siege has failed signally. What figures they would cut if she did!--and
Simpson, of all men! A growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of
the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently, and Mary,
sitting at the end of the oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that
she was the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't she been contented
to stay at home and make over her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes
of her aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?

"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think he'll get all tha