e kept them carefully averted from the
gleaming visitor. Charles-Norton, on the contrary, stared at him frankly.
A reminiscence was coming slowly, like a light, into his brain.

"I've seen you before," he said. "Twice I've seen you with your horse,
here, among the rocks."

"Did you see me?" said the man, with a smile.

"I couldn't place you then. But now I know. I know who you are. You're
Bison Billiam, aren't you; Bison Billiam, the great scout."

"So I am popularly known," said the man, with a bow.

"I remember you. It's ten, twelve years ago. You came out of a lot of
cardboard scenery at the end of the hall, hunting buffaloes. The calcium
light was on you, and you looked like this----"

Here Charles-Norton placed his right hand above his eyes in most approved
scouting style, and peered to right and left. "Humph," said Bison
Billiam, seemingly not altogether delighted with this representation.

"And you saw the buffalo--three of them--father and mother and son, I
guess--standing in the center of the arena. You galloped right into them,
and emptied the magazine of your Winchester into them--but they wouldn't
run. They knew you too well, I suppose."

"I suppose," agreed Bison Billiam. "The buffaloes I've hunted in the last
twenty years have known me pretty well. It was not so once," he said
reminiscently; "not so, not so----"

There was a little silence at this evocation of the melancholy of gone
days. The fire crackled. It was Bison Billiam who spoke first. "I've been
watching you fly," he said.

"Yes?" exclaimed Charles-Norton, flushing with pleasure and doubt.

"I have a permanent show in New York now," went on Bison Billiam.

"Yes?" said Charles-Norton.

"I want you to fly there," said Bison Billiam.

"Yes?" said Charles-Norton.

"I'll give you four hundred a week."

Charles-Norton fell backward into his bunk, his legs swaying
perpendicularly in the air like two derricks gone amuck. From the depths
of his involuntary position he heard the silvery pealing of Dolly's
laughter. When he rose again though, Dolly had ceased laughing, and Bison
Billiam's face had a gravity which somehow vaguely impressed
Charles-Norton as without solidity, like fresh varnish. The two looked as
though they had been gazing at each other, but their eyes now were
carefully averted.

"I didn't understand," said Charles-Norton, with dignity, and
surreptitiously took a firm hold of the edge of the bunk.

"The matter is simpl