e lighted, and the pinon was blazing in the great fireplace, the
room seemed as remote from Paradise Park as Claire herself.

There was an occasional visitor at Huntington's in the period of his
convalescence, usually a ranchwife eager for another glimpse at
Claire's wonderful housekeeping, or a young cow-puncher drawn by the
attraction of two very pretty and unusual women in one house. But the
ranchmen themselves, with two or three exceptions, were content to be
solicitous at long range--an abstention that relieved and at the same
time troubled Huntington. He was not eager to talk with his neighbors
about that episode at the post-office, but their aloofness filled him
with uneasiness. Well, let them wait! They would hear from him again,
and so should Haig!

There was, among the visitors, one whose coming perceptibly lightened
the tedium of those days. Marion had the good fortune to see him in
time not to be taken by surprise. Seated on the veranda after an
exhausting recital for the benefit of Huntington, she perceived the
figure of a horseman--yes, it was a horseman--riding out of the pines
toward the corrals. She stared. He was so little and so lost between
his pony, which seemed extraordinarily big, and his sombrero, which
undoubtedly was enormous, that she remained for a moment dumb, and
then, choking with laughter, fled into the house.

"Look, Claire, look!" she cried, grabbing her cousin's arm.

Claire, dragged to the door, looked and giggled.

"Haven't you seen that before?" she asked.

"No! Never!" answered Marion, her hand upon her mouth.

"Of course. He's just arrived--for the season. He was here last year,
and the year before."

"And they let him?" demanded Marion, thinking of the irrepressible
cow-punchers.

"Oh, he's all right!" Claire assured her. "That is, after you get used
to him. The men had all sorts of fun with him the first summer he was
here. But he took all their fun good-naturedly, and showed them he had
pluck too. They began to like him. Everybody likes him, and so will
you."

"But in the name of--who is he?"

The little man had descended like a parachute from his pony, and was
now bobbing rapidly up the graveled walk.

"Smythe," explained Claire hurriedly. "But he's here now--I'll let him
tell you--he likes to talk."

At the foot of the steps he caught sight of the two women in the
doorway; removed his wonderful headgear with an eighteenth-century
gesture; ducked his head in a