f his wealth was of
a young lady. It was Kitty Carter, the daughter of the hotelkeeper at
Boomville, who owned the claim that the partners had mutually coveted.
That a pretty girl's face should flash upon him with his conviction that
he was now a rich man meant perhaps no disloyalty to his partners,
whom he would still have helped. But it occurred to him now, in his
half-hurt, half-vengeful state, that they had often joked him about
Kitty, and perhaps further confidence with them was debarred. And it was
only due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.

This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and the
economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited upon the
hotel table. Half the town was always actively in love with her; the
other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but hopeless in defeat.
For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty girls occasionally met
with in Southwestern frontier civilization whose distinct and original
refinement of face and figure were so remarkable and original as to cast
a doubt on the sagacity and prescience of one parent and the morality of
the other, yet no doubt with equal injustice. But the fact remained
that she was slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her
stumpy, commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the
dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien. The
three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education and
refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty. And for some
occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had no obvious
or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker was particularly
favored.

He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel rose
before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether he had not
better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get a small advance
on them to buy a new necktie or a "boiled shirt" in which to present
himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he had partly given his
word to Demorest that he would keep his shares intact for the present,
he abandoned this project, probably from the fact that his projected
confidence with Kitty was already a violation of Demorest's injunctions
of secrecy, and his conscience was sufficiently burdened with that
breach of faith.

But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him. The
dining-room was at its slack wat