if you throw me! You'd better take this gun
here, plant it on my heart, and pull the trigger. Because if I live--I'm
talkin' straight--what I have done will be just a kid's play to what I'll
do, if I ever cut loose for fair. Don't throw me, girl! Give me a show--if
there ain't any one else! If there is, I'm quittin' the flat to-day."

Dora was silent, panic-stricken with the responsibility which he seemed
to have thrust upon her, almost terrified by the thought that he was
leaving his future in her hands--a malleable object, to be shaped
according to her will for good or evil.

A certain self-contained, spectacled youth, whose weekly letters arrived
with regularity, rose before her mental vision, and as quickly vanished,
leaving in his stead a man of a different type, a man at once unyielding
and gentle, both shy and bold; a man who seemed to typify in himself the
faults and virtues of the raw but vigorous West. Though she hesitated, she
replied:

"No, there is no one."

And Ralston, fording the stream, lifted his eyes midway and saw Smith
raise Dora's hand to his lips.

XI

THE BEST HORSE

There was a subtle change in Ralston, which Dora was quick to feel. He was
deferential, as always, and as eager to please; but he no longer sought
her company, and she missed the quick exchange of sympathetic glances at
the table. It seemed to her, also, that the grimness in his face was
accentuated of late. She found herself crying one night, and called it
homesickness, yet the small items of news contained in the latest letter
from the spectacled youth had irritated her, and she had realized that she
no longer regarded church fairs, choir practice, and oyster suppers as
"events."

She wondered how she had offended Ralston, if at all; or was it that he
thought her bold, a brazen creature, because she had let him keep her hand
so long upon the memorable occasion of the grasshopper hunt? She blushed
in the darkness at the thought, and the tears slipped down her cheeks
again as she decided that this must be so, since there could be no other
explanation. Before she finally slept, she had fully made up her mind that
she would show him by added reserve and dignity of manner that she was not
the forward hoyden he undoubtedly believed her. And as a result of this
midnight decision, the Schoolmarm's "Good-morning, Mr. Ralston," chilled
that person like a draught from cold storage.

Susie noticed the absence of their forme