as a second afterthought, he had scrawled at the top of the
note.

"A joke on you in case I shouldn't come back, Garth! I want you to
sell some cows and send me another two thousand. But I promise not to
do it again."

Garth told his news in the living room where the family had been
listening to the music of Wanda's lilting young voice with her mother's
piano accompaniment when he came in. Mrs. Leland's smiling face grew
clouded and distressed and her eyes turned involuntarily to her
husband. Martin Leland sprang to his feet in sudden wrath.

"Hell's bells!" he shouted angrily. "Two sacrifice sales in less than
a year! Four thousand dollars! And what has he done with it? Got
drunk, chucked it away across race courses and card tables . . . Would
to God I had done what it was my duty to do, that . . ."

"Martin!" cried Mrs. Leland. "Martin, dear!"

He stopped abruptly and sank back into his chair. For a little while
there was silence, heavy and painful. Wanda's eyes grew misty. Not
once since that day in the spring had she been disloyal to Red
Reckless, whom she had known in his boyhood, who had fought her early
battles for her, who had been the plumed knight of her early girlhood.
She told herself now that he had not come back because he could not
bear to return yet to the place where he and his brother had spent so
many happy days together, that if he was living wildly now, scurrying
up and down the world and flinging away his inheritance, it was because
he had felt his brother's loss far more than he had let them know, that
he was going his pace swiftly to forget what lay behind. And again
there rose in her heart the mute prayer that he might come back and be
a man and show them all that they had not judged him fairly.

Garth glanced swiftly at the faces of these three people who had heard
his news with such varied emotions, and went on to break the silence
none of them had noticed.

"Matters are going rather well on the range," he said quietly. "I sold
a hundred head at an average of ninety-seven dollars last week and was
able to bank the entire nine thousand, seven hundred. Maybe," with a
quick smile, "it will be just as well if he doesn't come back in a
hurry."

"Oh," cried Wanda impulsively. "That is ungenerous of you! After
Wayne says that he is leaving everything to you in his will, too!"

"I don't mean to be ungenerous or yet ungrateful," replied Garth a bit
stiffly, flushing under t