account of the adventures on the trail, up the Pass precipice, crossing the snow slide and in the desert, where the Ranger had refused to save his own life by abandoning his companion; and the narrative lost nothing in Matthews’ recital with his Scottish-Canadian R’s rolling out sonorous and strong, where he was moved to admiration or anger.  The sheep rancher sat silent through the stirring story with only an occasional glint of fire from his black eyes gazing aimlessly at the floor.

“’Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it shall return to you again.’  ’Minds me of what A saw you do for this woman you call Calamity, in our old Rebellion Days.”

Eleanor was sitting on the arm of her father’s leather chair.  The sheepman glanced up warningly, but Matthews was going ahead full steam.

“We’re both older than we were in those days, MacDonald, older an’ wiser, an’ for m’self, A should add, a good bit steadier!  You, y’ were always a sober-faced secret lad, MacDonald; an’ till yon day in front o’ th’ Agency house, A don’t think, A hardly think, we men knew what a devil was in y’!  A can see y’ yet as y’ kicked th’ gun out o’ yon blackguard’s hand an’ let him take the load o’ buckshot square between th’ shoulders!  ‘Twas a handsome thing o’ you to take th’ poor buddy in an’ give her a shelter!  How does she come to call herself Calamity?”

MacDonald’s foot came down on the floor with a clamp, and he rose.  “She didn’t.  ’Twas the miners in the Black Hills.  She used to bring in so many hard-luck chaps, shot up by the Sioux, bring ’em in on her shoulders from the hills to the camp, that the boys got to calling her Calamity.  She had lost her good looks, and—­” MacDonald shot a glance of warning in the direction of his daughter—­“and the same old story, I guess; she was off the market!  One of my trips to the mining camps up state, I found her in a mess of rags picking crusts out of the garbage barrels along a back lane!  I brought her back with me.  Gave her a week’s soak in the bath house—­” he paused as if reflecting, “and that it seems was foundation enough for the hog-wash that appeared in one of the papers here.  Suppose we take a walk as we discuss old days; they were pretty wild days for discussion before a girl, who didn’t know her dad before she was born.”

And Eleanor went out on the Ranch House piazza off her room, while the two frontiersmen strolled down the river.  How different her outlook on life was from two months before when reference to Calamity had called up mingled fury and horror.  Now that she understood, anything in this Western Country might be possible, and understandable, and explainable.  She had his hurried pencil note where she could feel it, under her locket; only the locket was outside above; and the fly leaf of that field book was inside next.  “Dick (nth),” he had signed himself; and he had not come down.  She could see the dark shadowy Ridge from her piazza chair,