sky, swiftly recovered tone. He was
careful, however, not to go beyond the limits of the contest as he
should have done had his arm possessed all of its proper cunning. He had
no real competitor but Dan, who had been drinking steadily all day and
was unfitted for his work. Mose lost nothing in the trial.

That night he put into his pocket one hundred and twenty dollars as the
result of his day's work, and immediately asked to be released of his
duties as guard.

The manager of the Express Company said: "I'm sorry you're leaving us,
and I hope you'll return to us soon. I'll hold the place open for you,
if you say so."

This Mose refused. "I don't like it," he said. "I don't think I earn the
money. Hire a good driver and he'll have no trouble. You don't need
me."

Mindful of his promise to eat dinner with the princess, he said to
Reynolds: "Don't wait for me. Go on--I'll overtake you at Twelve Mile
Creek."

The princess had not lost sight of him for a single moment, and the
instant he departed from his friends she drove up. "You are to come to
my house to-night, remember."

"I must overtake my folks; I can't stay long," he said lamely.

Her power was augmented by her home. He had expected pictures and fine
carpets and a piano and they were there, but there was a great deal
more. He perceived a richness of effect which he could not have
formulated better than to say, "It was all _fine_." He had expected
things to be costly and gay of color, but this mysterious fitness of
everything was a marvel to one like himself, used only to the meager
ornaments of the homes in Rock River, or the threadbare poverty of the
ranches and the squalid hotels of the cow country. The house was a large
new frame building, not so much different from other houses with respect
to exterior, but as he entered the door he took off his hat to it as he
used to do as a lad in the home of Banker Brooks, deacon in his father's
church.

His was a sensitive soul, eye and ear were both acute. He perceived,
without accounting for it, that the walls and hangings were
complementary in color, that the furniture matched the carpet, and that
the pictures on the wall were unusually good. They were not all
highly-colored, naked subjects, as he had been led to expect. His
respect for Mrs. Raimon rose, for he remembered that Mary's home, while
just as different from this as Mary was different from Mrs. Raimon, had,
after all, something in common--both were b