ay and came leisurely outside. Jerry saw a tall,
finely proportioned man, the set of whose clothes had a city air, and
there was something in his whole manner that would have distinguished
him from every other man in New Eden.

The fat little man talked earnestly, with a flourish of the hand now and
then toward the room where Jerry sat watching the two. York Macpherson
rested one foot on the running-board, and leaned his arms on the side of
the car, listening intently to what Mr. Ponk was saying.

"So that is this York Macpherson who was never responsible for my estate
not making any returns. And I called him an old man. The hotel
proprietor must be telling him that now." Jerry laughed as she saw the
two men chuckling together. "Well, I hope the pompous little fellow
tells him I'm an old woman. It would even things up wonderfully."

Ten minutes later Jerry was shaking hands with York Macpherson and
promising him to go to his home and meet his sister as soon as she had
cleared her eyes of dust sufficiently to see anybody.

It must have been the dust in her eyes, Jerry thought, that made York
Macpherson appear so unlike the benevolent, inefficient old gentleman
she had pictured to herself. The hotel parlor was in twilight shadows,
which helped a little to conceal the surprise of these two when they met
there. Jerry knew what she had been anticipating. Whether York
Macpherson knew or not, he was clearly not expecting what he found in
the hotel parlor.

"I'll soar down to your shack with the lady as soon as she has had her
supper and got herself rightly in hand," Ponk declared to York when he
came into the hotel office. "You see, we got stuck in that danged,
infernal blowout, and it was as hard on the womenkind who had to sit
inside and swelter as on us men who nobly dug. 'Specially this Miss
Swaim. She must have 'wept to see such quantities of sand,' same as them
oysters and walruses and carpenters. We'll be along by and by, though.
Have a cigar. What do you make of her, anyhow, York?"

"I don't make anything. I leave that job to you," York replied, with a
smile, as he turned abruptly and left the hotel.

"Unless you see eight per cent. interest coming your way, I see. There
might be a bigger interest in this investment than any you ever made in
your life," Ponk called after him.

But York only waved off the words without looking back. Outside, the
sunset's splendor was filling the western sky--the same old prairie