h
Jack," he replied. "You're the best girl in the world and I'm
going to marry you when I get rich enough to come back and
build you a house to be in, I'm going out where the cattle
are thick as grasshoppers, and I'm going to be a cattle king
and then you can be a cattle queen and ride around with me on
our ranch, that's what they call a farm out there. Now,
you're my girl and you must wait for me to come back. Don't
you get impatient, sometimes a chap has a hard time just to
get a start, after that it's easy. Jack will go with me, he
will be my friend and share everything.

"Now you come and call me sweetheart and I'll call you angel,
for that's what you are. Get to be a great singer, and go
about the country singing to make men like me good, you can
do it, only don't let them fall in love with you, they do
that too just the way I did, but don't let 'em do it for you
are mine. You're my sweetheart. From your sweetheart,

"HARRY EXCELL, Cattle King."

CHAPTER VI

THE CAGE OPENS

Before Harold's day of freedom came Mary was called home by a telegram
from her father. She longed to see Harold before she left, but she was
too much hurried to seek out Jack, the loyal go-between, and dared not
send a letter by any other hands. She went away without sending him a
word of good-by.

So it happened that the last week of Harold's captivity was spent in
loneliness and bitter sorrow, and even when Jack came he brought very
little information concerning Mary's flight, and Harold was bitter and
accusing.

"Why didn't she write to me? Why didn't she come to see me?"

Jack pleaded for her as well as he was able. "She hadn't time, maybe."

Harold refused to accept this explanation. "If she had cared for me,
she'd have sent me word--she could take time for that."

No letter came in the days which followed, and at last he put her out of
his heart and turned his face to the sunset land which now called to
the sad heart within him with imperious voice. Out there he could forget
all his hurts.

On the morning when the jailer opened the door for him to leave the iron
corridor in which he had spent so many months, his father met him, and
the white face of the boy made the father's heart contract. Harold's
cheeks were plump and boyish, but there was a look in his face which
made him seem a youth of twenty.

The family stood in the jailer's parlor to rece