n, but Harrison seemed uneasy; every few minutes he
mopped his face with his handkerchief and pressed his hand to his head
as if in pain. Visions of the little reception committee some few miles
ahead were constantly in his mind. What would he say and do when the
stage was stopped, and he received his cue to spring out and fire off
his six-shooter, especially as he had only fifteen dollars left in his
pocket. What would these pseudo-gentlemen of the road do to him, if,
after his little exhibit of bravery, he failed to wind up the melodrama
by settling with the actors? He didn't care to find out, and his mind
was bent now in deciding the best way to get back to Flagstaff. He
continued mopping his face, and once or twice he groaned.

"What is the matter?" asked Mr. Stiversant; "are you ill?"

"I fear so," answered Harrison faintly. "I have a dull pain in my head
and I feel faint."

"Oh, let us go back," said Nell, "it is only five miles, and we can
start again to-morrow just as well."

"Perhaps it would be as well," said Harrison weakly; "I fear I am going
to be ill."

In the privacy of a room at the hotel Harrison hastily manufactured an
urgent telegram calling him at once to San Francisco to see a sick
uncle, and had barely time to explain matters and express his deep
regret at being forced to leave the party at such short notice.

An hour later he lay back in a luxurious chair in the smoking
compartment of the California Limited, and gazed out of the windows at
the vast desert plains through which they passed. His eyes had a
far-away look in them, and ever and anon he sighed.

Far up the Grand Canyon road late that evening Brady and his three
companions still sat watching sadly for the stage which came not. There
they had sat in the burning sun without food or water since ten o'clock
that morning. They did not speak to each other, but occasionally they
cursed, sometimes the birds, sometimes the inanimate things about them.
At times they thought of Harrison--but what their thoughts were no one
will ever know.

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.

"Pretty good cigar this," remarked the Cowboy.

The Eastern man nodded.

"Nowadays we can buy good ones out where I live, but 'twa'n't very long
ago when good cigars were as rare out there as buffaloes are now round
Kansas City."

"The enormous increase in population in some of your Western cities is
astonishing," remarked the Eastern man.

The Cowboy glanced at him w