as always the
gentleman--no matter how frayed his clothing.

So far as the younger men were concerned, she saw little to admire and
much to hate. They were crude and uninteresting rowdies for the most part.
She was put upon her defence by their glances, and she came to dread
walking along the street, so open and coarse were their words of praise.
She felt dishonored by the glances which her feet drew after her, and she
always walked swiftly to and from the store or the post-office.

Few of these loafers had the courage to stand on their feet and court her
favor, but there was one who speedily became her chief persecutor. This
was Neill Ballard, celebrated (and made impudent) by two years' travel
with a Wild West show. He was tall, lean, angular, and freckled, but his
horsemanship was marvellous and his skill with the rope magical. His
special glory consisted in a complicated whirling of the lariat. In his
hand the limp, inert cord took on life, grace, charm. It hung in the air
or ran in rhythmic waves about him, rising, falling, expanding,
diminishing, as if controlled by some agency other than a man's hand, and
its gyrations had won much applause in the Eastern cities, where such
skill is expected of the cowboys.

He had lost his engagement by reason of a drunken brawl, and he was now
living with his sister, the wife of a small rancher near by. He was vain,
lazy, and unspeakably corrupt, full of open boasting of his exploits in
the drinking-dens of the East. No sooner did he fix eyes upon Virginia
than he marked her for his special prey. He had the depraved heart of the
herder and the insolent confidence of the hoodlum, and something of this
the girl perceived. She despised the other men, but she feared this one,
and quite justly, for he was capable of assaulting and binding her with
his rope, as he had once done with a Shoshone squaw.

The Greggs, father and son, were in open rivalry for Lee also, but in
different ways. The older man, who had already been married several times,
was disposed to buy her hand in what he called "honorable wedlock," but
the son, at heart a libertine, approached her as one who despised the
West, and who, being kept in the beastly country by duty to a parent, was
ready to amuse himself at any one's expense. He had no purpose in life but
to feed his body and escape toil.

There are women to whom all this warfare would have been diverting, but it
was not so to Lee. Her sense of responsibil