and his daughter
were undisturbed.

As he turned in at the Kauffman gate he caught a glimpse of the girl
hoeing in the garden, wearing the same blue sunbonnet in which she had
appeared at the inquest. She was deeply engaged with her potatoes and
did not observe him till, upon hearing the clatter of his horse's hoofs
upon the bridge, she looked up with a start. Seeing in him a possible
enemy, she dropped her hoe and ran toward the house like a hare seeking
covert. As she reached the corner of the kitchen she turned, fixed a
steady backward look upon him, and disappeared.

Hanscom smiled. He had seen other women hurrying to change their
workaday dress for visitors, and he imagined Helen hastily putting on
her shoes and smoothing her hair. He was distinctly less in awe of her
by reason of this girlish action--it made her seem more of his own
rough-and-ready world, and he dismounted at her door almost at his ease,
although his heart had been pounding furiously as he rode down the
ridge.

She surprised him by reappearing in her working-gown, but shod with
strong, low-heeled shoes. "Good evening, Mr. Forest Ranger," she said,
smiling, yet perturbed. "I didn't recognize you at first. Won't you
'picket' and come in?" She said this in the tone of one consciously
assuming the vernacular.

"Thank you, I believe I will," he replied, with candid heartiness. "I
was riding one of my lower trails to-day, so I just thought I'd drop
down and see how you were all coming on."

"We are quite well, thank you. Daddy's away just this minute. One of our
cows hid her calf in the hills, and he's trying to find it. Won't you
put your horse in the corral?"

"No; he's all right. He's a good deal like me--works better on a small
ration. A standing siesta will just about do him."

A gleam of humor shone in her eyes. "Neither of you 'pear to be
suffering from lack of food. But come in, please, and have a seat."

He followed her into the cabin, keenly alive to the changes in her dress
as well as in her manner. She wore her hair plainly parted, as at the
hearing, but it lay much lower about her brow and rippled charmingly.
She stood perfectly erect, also, and moved with a fine stride, and the
lines of her shoulders, even under a rough gray shirtwaist, were strong
and graceful. Though not skilled in analyzing a woman's "outfit," the
ranger divined that she wore no corset, for the flex of her powerful
waist was like that of a young man.

Her sp