window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black,
standing over Separ.

DESTINY AT DRYBONE

PART I

Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to
ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people
and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not
guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine
it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss
Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never
yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine.
Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr.
McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well,
and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She
was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable
nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at
Separ, and "yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'" Postscript. Talking
of Billy Lusk--if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send
Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the
ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She
knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with
the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to
Lin--until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine
wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy
of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer
to this remarkably soon--young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve
pages in pencil and ink--the only writing of this length ever done by
Mr. McLean.

"I can write a lot quicker than Lin," said Billy, upon arriving. "He was
fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling
in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to
the cabin for my clothes."

"You don't say!" said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him
again.

When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely
at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors.
But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.

Soon after breakfast this stormy morning