move was not yet; and herein was the real
man. In his mind there were still purposes which required complete
fulfilment before that further upward movement began. It was the more
human side of the man dictating its will upon him, that will which can
never be denied when once it rouses from its slumbers amid the living
fires which course through the veins of healthy manhood.

Just now, as he leaned back in his unyielding chair, luxuriating in a
comfort which only a man as hard as he could have extracted from it,
the hot, living fires were stirring in his veins. His mind had gone
back to a picture, one of the many pictures which so often held him in
his scant leisure, that represented the first waking of those dormant
fires of manhood.

The scene was a memory forming the starting point of a long series of
other pictures, which aways came with a rush, changing and changing
with kaleidoscopic rapidity till they developed into a stream of
swiftly flowing thought.

It was the picture of a quaint, straggling prairie village, half
hidden in the multi-hued foliage of a deep valley, as viewed from his
saddle where his horse stood upon the shoulder of land which dropped
away at his feet. It was one of those wondrous fairy scenes with which
the prairie, in her friendlier moods, delights to charm the eye.
Perhaps "mock" would better express her whim, for many of these fair
settlements in the days of the Prohibition Laws were veritable
sepulchers of crime, only whitewashed by the humorous mood of nature.

Ten yards below him an aged pine reared its hoary, time-worn head
toward the gleaming azure of a noonday summer sky. It was a landmark
known throughout the land; it was the landmark which had guided him to
this obscure village of Rocky Springs. It had been in his eye all the
morning as he rode toward it, and as he drew near curiosity had
impelled him to leave the trail he was on and examine more closely
this wonderful specimen of a far, far distant age.

But his inspection was never fully made. Instead, his interest was
abruptly diverted to that which he beheld reposing beneath its
shadow. A girl was sitting, half reclining, against the dark old
trunk, with a sewing basket at her side, and a perfect maze of white
needlework in her lap.

She was not sewing, however, as he drew near. She was gazing out over
the village below, with a pair of eyes so deep and darkly beautiful
that the man caught his breath. Just for one unconscio