r relief to the work that had
become so familiar to him.

She watched him while he released the steer, and drove the animal away
over the ridge, where he permitted it to escape into the wild haunts
where it lived with its outlaw companions.

When he rode back to the little camp Stanford had returned.

For an hour they talked together as old friends. But Helen, while she
offered now and then a word or a remark, or asked a question, and
laughed or smiled with them, left the talk mostly to the two men.
Stanford, when the first shock of learning of Helen's narrow escape was
over, was gaily enthusiastic and warm in his admiration for his old
friend, who had, for no apparent reason but the wish to assert his own
manhood, turned his back upon the ease and luxury of his wealth to live
a life of adventurous hardship. And Patches, as he insisted they should
call him, with many a laughing jest and droll comment told them of his
new life and work. He was only serious when he made them promise to keep
his identity a secret until he himself was ready to reveal his real
name.

"And what do you propose to do when your game of Patches is played out?"
Stanford asked curiously.

For an instant they saw him smiling mockingly at himself; then he
answered lightly, "Try some other fool experiment, I reckon."

Stanford chuckled; the reply was so like the cowboy Patches, and so
unlike his old friend Larry Knight.

"As for that, Stan," Patches continued, "I don't see that the game will
ever be played out, as you say. Certainly I can never now go back
altogether to what I was. The fellow you used to know in Cleveland is
not really I, you see. Fact is, I think that fellow is quite dead--peace
be to his ashes! The world is wide and there is always work for a man to
do."

The appearance of Phil Acton on the ridge, at the spot where the steer,
followed by Patches, had first appeared, put an end to their further
conversation with Lawrence Knight.

"My boss!" said that gentleman, in his character of Patches the cowboy,
as the Cross-Triangle foreman halted his horse on the brow of the hill,
and sat looking down upon the camp.

"Be careful, please, and don't let him suspect that you ever saw me
before. I'll sure catch it now for loafing so long."

"I know him," said Stanford. Then he called to the man above, "Come on
down, Acton, and be sociable."

Phil rode into camp, shook hands with Stanford cordially, and was
presented to Mrs. Manning