k I
have securities to a considerable amount,--I am perfectly willing that
any one who is at all interested should inquire of the Trust Company
officers as to my standing with them. If I were asked to state my
occupation I should have to say that I am a cattle herder--what you call
a cowboy. I can make my living in the practice of the business almost
anywhere from New Mexico north to the Canadian line. I flatter myself
that I am pretty good at it," and John Armitage smiled and took a
cigarette from a box on the table and lighted it.

Dick Claiborne was greatly interested in what Armitage had said, and he
struggled between an inclination to encourage further confidence and a
feeling that he should, for Shirley's sake, make it clear to this
young-stranger that it was of no consequence to any member of the
Claiborne family who he was or what might be the extent of his lands or
the unimpeachable character of his investments. But it was not so easy to
turn aside a fellow who was so big of frame and apparently so sane and so
steady of purpose as this Armitage. And there was, too, the further
consideration that while Armitage was volunteering gratuitous
information, and assuming an interest in his affairs by the Claibornes
that was wholly unjustified, there was also the other side of the matter:
that his explanations proceeded from motives of delicacy that were
praiseworthy. Dick was puzzled, and piqued besides, to find that his
resources as a big protecting brother were so soon exhausted. What
Armitage was asking was the right to seek his sister Shirley's hand in
marriage, and the thing was absurd. Moreover, who was John Armitage?

The question startled Claiborne into a realization of the fact that
Armitage had volunteered considerable information without at all
answering this question. Dick Claiborne was a human being, and curious.

"Pardon me," he asked, "but are you an Englishman?"

"I am not," answered Armitage. "I have been so long in America that I
feel as much at home there as anywhere--but I am neither English nor
American by birth; I am, on the other hand--"

He hesitated for the barest second, and Claiborne was sensible of an
intensification of interest; now at last there was to be a revelation
that amounted to something.

"On the other hand," Armitage repeated, "I was born at Fontainebleau,
where my parents lived for only a few months; but I do not consider that
that fact makes me a Frenchman. My mother is de