sts on a practical demonstration.
I shall ossify out there in those mountains. It's written in the
book."

"Humph! it's too bad about you," said the other ironically. He was
a fit figure of a man, clean-cut and vigorous, from the steadfast
outlook of the gray eyes and the firm, smooth-shaven jaw to the square
fingertips of the strong hands, and his smile was of good-natured
contempt. "As you say, it is an outrage on filial complaisance. All
the same, with the right-of-way fight in prospect, Quartz Creek Canyon
may not prove to be such a valley of dry bones as--Look out, there!"

The shifting-engine had cut a car from the rear of the lately-arrived
Alton, and was sending it down the outbound track to a coupling with
the Transcontinental Limited. Adams stepped back and let it miss him
by a hand's-breadth, and as the car was passing, Winton read the name
on the paneling.

"The Rosemary: somebody's twenty-ton private outfit. That cooks our
last chance of making up any lost time between this and tomorrow--"

He broke off abruptly. On the square rear observation platform of
the private car were three ladies. One of them was small and
blue-eyed, with wavy little puffs of snowy hair peeping out under
her dainty widow's cap. Another was small and blue-eyed, with wavy
masses of flaxen hair caught up from a face which might have served
as a model for the most exquisite bisque figure that ever came out
of France. But Winton saw only the third.

She was taller than either of her companions--tall and straight and
lithe; a charming embodiment of health and strength and beauty:
clear-skinned, brown-eyed--a very goddess fresh from the bath, in
Winton's instant summing up of her, and her crown of red-gold hair
helped out the simile.

Now, thus far in his thirty-year pilgrimage John Winton, man and
boy, had lived the intense life of a working hermit, so far as the
social gods and goddesses were concerned. Yet he had a pang--of
disappointment or pointless jealousy, or something akin to both--when
Adams lifted his hat to this particular goddess, was rewarded by a
little cry of recognition, and stepped up to the platform to be
presented to the elder and younger Bisques.

So, as we say, Winton turned and walked away as one left out, feeling
one moment as though he had been defrauded of a natural right, and
deriding himself the next, as a sensible man should. After a bit he
was able to laugh at the "sudden attack," as he phrased it, b