tentative disposition of its founder. It had
been repaired without being improved; its additions had seemed only
to extend its primitive ugliness over a larger space. Its roofs were
roughly shingled or rudely boarded and battened, and the rafters of
some of its "lean-to's" were simply covered with tarred canvas. As if
to settle any doubt of the impossibility of this heterogeneous mass
ever taking upon itself any picturesque combination, a small building of
corrugated iron, transported in sections from some remoter locality, had
been set up in its centre. The McKinstry ranch had long been an eyesore
to the master: even that morning he had been mutely wondering from what
convolution of that hideous chrysalis the bright butterfly Cressy had
emerged. It was with a renewal of this curiosity that he had just seen
her flutter back to it again.

A yellow dog who had observed him hesitating in doubt where he should
enter, here yawned, rose from the sunlight where he had been blinking,
approached the master with languid politeness, and then turned towards
the iron building as if showing him the way. Mr. Ford followed him
cautiously, painfully conscious that his hypocritical canine introducer
was only availing himself of an opportunity to gain ingress into the
house, and was leading him as a responsible accomplice to probable
exposure and disgrace. His expectation was quickly realized: a lazily
querulous, feminine outcry, with the words, "Yer's that darned hound
agin!" came from an adjacent room, and his exposed and abashed companion
swiftly retreated past him into the road again. Mr. Ford found himself
alone in a plainly-furnished sitting-room confronting the open door
leading to another apartment at which the figure of a woman, preceded
hastily by a thrown dishcloth, had just appeared. It was Mrs. McKinstry;
her sleeves were rolled up over her red but still shapely arms, and as
she stood there wiping them on her apron, with her elbows advanced,
and her closed hands raised alternately in the air, there was an odd
pugilistic suggestion in her attitude. It was not lessened on her sudden
discovery of the master by her retreating backwards with her hands up
and her elbows still well forward as if warily retiring to an imaginary
"corner."

Mr. Ford at once tactfully stepped back from the doorway. "I beg your
pardon," he said, delicately addressing the opposite wall, "but I found
the door open and I followed the dog."

"That's just