eat and serviceable drab uniform, which attracted the
convalescent, and on Sunday morning he decided to venture a call,
although Frank Meeker had said the ranger was a "grouch."

His cabin, a neat log structure, stood just above the road on a huge
natural terrace of grassy boulders, and the flag which fluttered from a
tall staff before it could be seen for several miles--the bright sign of
federal control, the symbol of law and order, just as the saloon and the
mill were signs of lawless vice and destructive greed. Around the door
flowers bloomed and kittens played; while at the door of the dive broken
bottles, swarms of flies, and heaps of refuse menaced every corner, and
the mill immured itself in its own debris like a foul beast.

It was strangely moving to come upon this flower-like place and this
garden in the wilderness. A spring, which crept from the high wall back
of "the station" (as these ranger headquarters are called), gave its
delicious water into several winding ditches, trickled musically down the
other side of the terrace in little life-giving cascades, and so finally,
reunited in a single current, fell away into the creek. It was plain that
loving care, and much of it, had been given to this tiny system of
irrigation.

The cabin's interior pleased Wayland almost as much as the garden. It was
built of pine logs neatly matched and hewed on one side. There were but
two rooms--one which served as sleeping-chamber and office, and one which
was at once kitchen and dining-room. In the larger room a quaint
fireplace with a flat arch, a bunk, a table supporting a typewriter, and
several shelves full of books made up the furnishing. On the walls hung a
rifle, a revolver in its belt, a couple of uniforms, and a yellow oilskin
raincoat.

The ranger, spurred and belted, with his cuffs turned back, was pounding
the typewriter when Wayland appeared at the open door; but he rose with
grave courtesy. "Come in," he said, and his voice had a pleasant
inflection.

"I'm interrupting."

"Nothing serious, just a letter. There's no hurry. I'm always glad of an
excuse to rest from this job." He was at once keenly interested in his
visitor, for he perceived in him the gentleman and, of course, the
alien.

Wayland, with something of the feeling of a civilian reporting to an
officer, explained his presence in the neighborhood.

"I've heard of you," responded the ranger, "and I've been hoping you'd
look in on me. The Supe