ent slowly out, and slowly crossed the street to the hotel, indifferent
to the steady fall of rain, York Macpherson's eyes followed him
earnestly.

"He'll almost forget to strut if that girl stays here--but she won't
stay. And he will strut. He's made that way. But down under it all he's
a man, God bless him--a man any woman could trust."

Up at "Castle Cluny" the rainy day brought one caller whom "chilling
winds nor poisonous breath" could never halt--Mrs. Stellar Bahrr,
otherwise--"the Big Dipper"--the town gossip.

Mrs. Stellar Bahrr was a married, widowed-by-divorce, old-maid type,
built like a sky-scraper, of the lean, uncertain age just around sixty,
with the roundness of youth all gone, and the plump beauty of
matronliness all lacking, wrinkled with envy and small malice, living on
repeating what New Eden wanted kept untold. Hiding what New Eden should
have known of her, she maintained herself on a pension from some one,
known only to York Macpherson, and the small income derived just now
from trimming over last year's hats "to make them look like
four-year-olds," York declared.

The real milliner of the town was a brisk, bright business woman who had
Stellar Bahrr on her trail in season and out of season. Mrs. Bahrr
herself could not have kept up a business of any kind for a week, for
she changed callings almost with the moon's phases.

No more unwelcome caller could have intruded on the homey, delicious,
rainy-day seclusion of "Castle Cluny."

"I jis' run in to see the hat again you're goin' to wear to-morrow, Miss
Laury. I 'ain't got more 'n a minute. Ye ain't alone this dreary day,
are ye? The Lenwells was sayin' last night your brother was goin' to the
upper Sage Brush on some business with the Posers. But they're in town,
rainy as it is, an' all. Did he go?"

"No, he put it off till Monday," Laura replied, wondering what interest
York's going or coming could be to Stellar Bahrr.

"As I was sayin', the Posers is in town. Come to meet Nell and her baby.
They come in on the freight yesterday. The biggest, bald-headest young
un you ever see. Nell wants her hat fixed over, and nothin' on the
livin' earth to fix it with, ner money to pay for it. I'll make ol'
Poser do that, though. Lemme see your hat, so's I can get an idy or two.
You've got some 'commodation, if that blamed millinery-store hain't.
Thank ye for the favor."

Stellar had a way of pinning her eyes through one until her victim could
not sq