r a second
proving up."

Jessie, who had been listening intently, here suddenly interposed with
sparkling eyes, "I'm old enough now, Mr. Wilson, or, at least, I shall
be to-morrow. To-morrow is my birthday, and I shall be eighteen!"

Mr. Wilson sprang up so suddenly that he overturned his chair, and
sent Ralph's new pet scurrying from the room in wild alarm.

"Hooray for us!" he cried, seizing Jessie's hand. "The Gordons
forever! Now we're all right. I've felt certain all along that the
agent would give you a deed if he could, but he couldn't if you were
all under age. 'Twouldn't 'a' been legal. But if one of you is of
legal age, the homestead business is settled."

"But suppose he should refuse to give us a deed on account of the
claim's standing in father's name?" Jessie asked.

"In that case the thing to do is to file on it again, right there and
then, in your own name--strange, ain't it," he interjected, suddenly,
"that the law 'pears to declare that a girl's as smart at eighteen as
a boy is at twenty-one? Wal', the law don't know everything; you must
go down there day after to-morrow, prepared to enter the claim again,
though I do hope it won't come to that."

"That will cost a good deal, too, won't it?" Jessie inquired,
dejectedly.

"Yes; it will. I don't see but you must go down with money enough not
only to pay up the final fees, but to file on the land again in case
of the agent's refusal."

"Will that take more than the fees would amount to?" I inquired.

"Bless you, yes! I don't know jest how much, but a right smart. How
much have you got now?"

It needed no reckoning to tell the sum total of our painfully
garnered hoard. Mr. Wilson shook his head when Jessie named the sum
total. "Not enough; not enough, by half! And, as the worst luck will
have it, I'm clean out of money myself jest now. I declare, I don't
see where my money all goes! It don't 'pear to matter how much I may
have one day, it's all gone the next; beats all, it does!" He looked
at us solemnly, sitting with his lips pursed up, his hair standing
bolt upright, and his brows knit over the problem of his own financial
shortage, yet, to one who knew him, no problem was of easier solution.
Up and down the length and breadth of the valley, in miner's lonely
cabin, in cowboy's rough shack, or struggling rancher's rude
domicile--wherever a helpful friend was needed, Mr. Wilson was known
and loved, and, if money was needed, all that he had wa