rt as fast as he can earn it, but he won't live with her. She flies
from hat-trimming to sewing and baking and nursing and back to sewing,
and she never earns much anywhere, and works up trouble just for pure
cussedness. But to-day she went to the upper Sage Brush to help old Mrs.
Poser. The Posers were nearly washed away, and the old lady is sick and
lonely and almost helpless. She needs somebody to stay with her. Yes,
Stellar is really becoming a star--a plain, homely planet, doing a
good-angel line where she's most useful. We'll let the past stay where
it belongs, and count her reclaimed to better things now."

"Amen! And what about the valley down-stream? It must be worse, because
the storm came up from that way," Laura declared.

"There are plenty of rumors, but I haven't heard anything definite yet,
for I just got here, you know, and, as I telephoned you, found Mr.
Wellington had registered at Ponk's inn. The traveling-men who were on
the branch line have brought the first word to town to-day. The train is
stuck somewhere down the valley, and the tracks, for the most part, are
at the bottom of the Sage Brush. There are washouts all along the
road-bed, and the passengers have been hauled up the stream, across
fields, and every other way, except by the regular route. No automobile
can travel the trail now, so our Philadelphia gentleman arrives a good
bit disgusted with this bloomin' Western country, don't you know; and
sore from miles of jolting; and hungry; and sort of mussy-looking for a
banker; but cocksure of a welcome and of the power to bring salvation to
one of us at least."

York dropped down on the porch step with a frown, flinging aside his hat
and thrusting his fingers savagely into his heavy hair.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, dejectedly. "There's been a three years'
running fight between Jim Swaim's determined chin and Lesa's tender
eyes. I had hoped to the Lord that Jim would win the day, but that
whirlwind campaign of pleading and luxury-tempting letters came just at
the end of a hard year's work in the high school, with all that infernal
fuss in the Senior class, splitting the town open for a month and being
forgotten in an hour, and the jealousy toward the best teacher we've
ever had here, etcetera. So the '_eyes_' seem to have it. If there were
no ladies present," York added, with a half-smile, "I'd feel free to
express my lordly judgment of the whole damned sex."

"Don't hesitate, Yorick; a littl