and small reticent windows,
out of which veiled ladies would glance. And all was still with the
stillness of utter desertion.

Then he explored farther and felt curiously disappointed at finding
that these structures were to real houses what a dicky is to a sincere,
genuine shirt. They were pretentiously false.

One had but to step behind them to discover them as poor shells.

Their backs were jutting beams carried but little beyond the fronts and
their stout-appearing walls were revealed to be fragile contrivances of
button-lath and thin plaster. The ghost quality departed from them with
this discovery.

He left these cities of silence and came upon an open space and people.
They were grouped before a railway station, a small red structure beside
a line of railway track. At one end in black letters, on a narrow white
board, was the name Boomerville.

The people were plainly Western: a dozen cowboys, a sprinkling of bluff
ranchers and their families. An absorbed young man in cap and khaki and
puttees came from a distant group surrounding a camera and readjusted
the line of these people. He placed them to his liking. A wagon drawn
by two horses was driven up and a rancher helped a woman and girl to
alight. The girl was at once sought out by the cowboys. They shook hands
warmly under megaphoned directions from a man back by the camera. The
rancher and his wife mingled with the group. The girl was drawn aside
by one of the cowboys. He had a nobler presence than the others; he was
handsome and his accoutrements seemed more expensive. They looked into
each other's eyes a long time, apparently pledging an eternal fidelity.
One gathered that there would have been an embrace but for the cowboy's
watchful companions. They must say good-by with a mere handshake,
though this was a slow, trembling, long-drawn clasp while they steadily
regarded each other, and a second camera was brought to record it at a
distance of six feet. Merton Gill thrilled with the knowledge that he
was beholding his first close-up. His long study of the photo-drama
enabled him to divine that the rancher's daughter was going to Vassar
College to be educated, but that, although returning a year later a
poised woman of the world, she would still long for the handsome cowboy
who would marry her and run the Bar-X ranch. The scene was done. The
camera would next be turned upon a real train at some real station,
while the girl, with a final look at her lover,