t as she stays on the outside of
'em, and gets to romancing. A mouthful of real ice-cream spoils your
taste everlasting for frozen starch and raw eggs."

"Lahoma is a real person," declared Bill, "and a dugout is grounded and
bedded in a real thing--this very solid and very real old earth, if you
ask to know what I mean."

"Lord, _I_ knows what you mean," retorted Willock. "You've lived in a
hole in the ground most of your life, and are pretty near ripe to be
laid away in another one, smaller I grant you, but dark and deep,
according. We'll never get Lahoma back the same as when we let her
flutter forth hunting a green twig over the face of the waters. She
may bring back the first few leaves she finds, but a time's going to
come...." He broke off abruptly, his eyes wide and troubled, as if
already viewing the dismal prospect.

"Maybe I AM old," Bill grudgingly conceded, "but I don't set up to be
no Noah's ark."

"Oh," cried Willock, his sudden sense of future loss causing him to
speak with unwonted irony, "maybe you're just a Shem, or Ham or that
other kind of Fat-- What's the matter, Wilfred? Can't you let go of
that letter?"

"I've made out the name of that widower who's paying court to my old
sweetheart," he said, "but it's one I never heard of before; that's why
it looked so strange--it's Gledware."

Willock uttered a sharp exclamation. "Let me see it." He started up
abruptly, and bent over the page.

"What of it?" asked Bill in surprise. Willock had uttered words to
which the dugout was unaccustomed.

"That's what it is," Willock growled; "it's Gledware!" His face had
grown strangely dark and forbidding, and Wilfred, who had never
imagined it could be altered by such an expression, handed him the
letter with a sense of uneasiness.

"What of it?" reiterated Bill. "Suppose it IS Gledware; who is HE?"

"Do you know such a man?" Wilfred demanded.

"Out with it!" cried Bill, growing wrathful as the other glowered at
the fire. "What's come over you? Look here, Brick Willock, Lahoma is
your cousin, but I claim my share in that little girl and I ask you
sharp and flat--"

"Oh you go to--!" cried Willock fiercely. "All of you."

Wilfred said lightly, "Red Feather has already gone there, perhaps."

"Eh?" Willock wheeled about as if roused to fresh uneasiness. The
Indian chief had glided from the room, as silent and as unobtrusive as
a shadow.

Willock sank on the bench beside Bill Atkins