r wishes. A little word or
two from you would be an added safeguard."

"Sure I'll talk to her," said the Ranger, heartily--rising and whistling
to the chestnut. "But look here, Myra,"--he said, pausing with his foot in
the stirrup,--"the girl must have her head, you know. We don't want to put
her in the notion that every man in the world is a villain laying for a
chance to do her harm. There _are_ clean fellows--a few--and it will do
Sibyl good to meet that kind." He swung himself lightly into the saddle.

The woman smiled; "Sibyl could not think that all men are evil, after
knowing her father and you, Mr. Oakley."

The Ranger laughed as he turned Max toward the opening in the cedar
thicket. "Will was what God and Nelly made him, Myra; and I--if I'm fairly
decent it's because Mary took me in hand in time. Men are mostly what you
women make 'em, anyway, I reckon."

"Don't forget that you and Mrs. Oakley are coming for supper to-morrow,"
she called after him.

"No danger of our forgetting that," he answered. "Adios!" And the chestnut
loped easily out of the yard.

Myra Willard kept her place on the porch until the sound of the horse's
galloping feet died away down the canyon. But, as she listened to the
vanishing sound of the Ranger's going, her eyes were looking far away--as
though his words had aroused in her heart memories of days long past. When
the last echo had lost itself in the thin mountain air, she went into the
house.

Standing before the small mirror that served--in the rude, almost
camp-like furnishings of the house--for both herself and Sibyl, she
studied the face reflected there--turning her head slowly, as if comparing
the beautiful unmarked side with the other that was so hideously
disfigured. For some time she stood there, unflinchingly giving herself to
the torture of this contemplation of her ruined loveliness; drinking to
its bitter dregs the sorrowful cup of her secret memories; until, as
though she could bear no more, she drew back--her eyes wide with pain and
horror, her marred features twisted grotesquely in an agony of mental
suffering. With a pitiful moan she sank upon her knees in prayer.

In the earnestness of her spirit--out of the deep devotion of her love--as
she prayed God for wisdom to guide the girl entrusted to her care, she
spoke aloud. "Let me not rob her, dear Christ, of love; but help me to
help her love aright. Help me, that in my fear for her I do not turn her
heart again