anted."

He resumed:

When I look up into the night,
An' see their flickerin' light.

He ceased and looked at Hollis with an abashed smile. "It don't seem to
sound so good when I'm readin' her out loud," he apologized. "An' I've
thought that mebbe I've worked that 'night' an' 'light' rhyme over-time.
But of course I've got 'fright' an' 'sight' an' 'height' in there to
kind of off-set that." He squirmed in his chair. "You take her an' read
her." He passed the papers over to Hollis and rose from his chair. "I'll
be goin' back to the outfit; Norton was sayin' that he wanted me to look
up some strays an' I don't want him to be waitin' for me. But I'd like
to have one of them pomes printed in the _Kicker_--just to show the
folks in this here country that there's a real pote in their midst."

"Why----" began Hollis, about to express his surprise over his guest's
sudden determination to depart. But he saw Nellie Hazelton standing just
outside the door, and the cause of Ace's projected departure was no
longer a mystery. He had gone before Hollis could have finished his
remonstrance, and was fast disappearing in a cloud of dust down the
trail when Hollis turned slowly to see Nellie Hazelton smiling broadly.

"I just couldn't resist coming out," she said. "It rather startled me to
discover that there was a real poet in the country."

"There seems to be no doubt of it," returned Hollis with a smile. But he
immediately became serious. "Ace means well," he added. "I imagine that
it wasn't entirely an ambition to rush into print that moved him to
submit his poems; he wants to help fill up the paper."

Miss Hazelton laughed. "I really think," she said, looking after the
departing poet, "that he might have been fibbing a little when he said
that the 'night' had not 'scared' him. He ran from me," she added,
amusement shining in her eyes, "and I should not like to think that any
woman could appear so forbidding and mysterious as the darkness."

Hollis had been scanning one of the poems in his hand. He smiled
whimsically at Miss Hazelton as she concluded.

"Here is Ace's opinion on that subject," he said. "Since you have
doubted him I think it only fair that you should give him a hearing.
Won't you read it?"

She came forward and seated herself in the chair that the poet had
vacated, taking the mass of paper that Hollis passed over to her.

"Shall I read it aloud?" she asked with a smile at him.

"I think you had bet