ped hands, looking earnestly into Joe's face, as she
said this. Oh, fair was she, this exquisite white-blossom style of girl,
facing her first life-problem, the big problem of living. Joe Thomson
made no reply to her question. What could this dainty, untrained
creature do with the best of claims? The frank sincerity of his silence
made an appeal to her that the wisest advice could not have made just
then.

York Macpherson was right when he said that Jim Swaim's child was a type
of her own. If Jerry, through her mother's nature, was impulsive and
imaginative, from her father she had inherited balance and clear vision.
Her young years had heretofore made no call upon her to exercise these
qualities. What might have been turned to the frivolous and romantic in
one parent, and the hard-headed and grasping in the other, now became
saving qualities for the child of these two. In an instant Jerry read
the young ranchman's character clearly and foresaw in him a friend and
helper. But there was neither romance nor selfishness in that vision.

"Mr. Thomson," the girl began, seriously, "you need not apologize for
what you could not help feeling about the condition of my estate and the
wrong that has been done to you. I know you do not hold me responsible
for it. Let's forget that you thought you had said anything unpleasant
to me, for I want to ask your advice."

"Mine!" Joe Thomson exclaimed.

This sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl was walking straight into another
heart in the Sage Brush Valley. Nature had given her that heritage,
wherever she might go.

"Yes, your advice, please." Jerry went on. "You have watched that sand
spreading northward over your claim. You have had days, months, years,
maybe, to see the blowout doing its work. I awakened suddenly one
morning from a beautiful day-dream. My only heritage left of all the
fortune I had been brought to expect to be mine, the inheritance I had
idealized with all the romantic beauty and prosperity possible to rural
life, in a minute all this turned to a desert before my eyes. You belong
to the West. Tell me, won't you, what is next for me?"

"What could I tell you, Miss Swaim?" Joe asked.

"Tell me what to do, I mean," Jerry exclaimed. "Tell me quickly, for I
am right against the bread-line now."

For a moment Joe stared at the girl in amazement. Her earnestness left
no room to misunderstand her. But his senses came back quickly, as one
whose life habit it had been to meet