dresser. The belt, Spanish
earrings of fabulous value and length, rings that almost blinded her
when she held the stones in the sunlight, a great oval brooch,
bracelets, and a necklace of matched stones that made her heart beat
almost to suffocation when she tried it on her brown throat.

She had it in her power to "knock their eyes out," as daddy (and Tom
Gallup) had expressed it. She could bedeck herself like a queen. She
knew that Sue Latrop worshiped the tangible signs of wealth, as she
understood them.

Cattle, and range lands, and horses, and a great, rambling house like
this at the Bar-T, impressed the girl from Boston very little. But
jewels would appeal to her empty head as nothing else could.

Frances knew this very well. She knew that she could overawe the Boston
girl with a display of these gems. And she would please her father, too,
in loading her fingers and ears and neck and arms with the brilliants.

And then, before she got any farther in her dressing, or had decided in
her troubled mind what really to do, there came another, and lighter,
tapping on her door.

"Who's there?" asked Frances.

"It's only me, Frances," said Pratt.

"What do you want?" she asked, calmly, rising and approaching the door.

"Got something for you--if you want them," the young man said, in a low
voice.

"What is it?" she queried.

"Open the door and see," and he laughed a little nervously.

Frances drew her gown closer about her throat, and turned the knob.
Instantly a great bunch of fragrant little blossoms--the wild-flowers so
hard to find on the plains and in the foothills--were thrust into her
hands.

"Oh, _Pratt!_" shrieked the girl in delight.

She clasped the blossoms to her bosom; she buried her face in them.
Pratt watched her with smiling lips, and wonderingly.

How pretty and girlish she was! The grown-up air that responsibilities
had lent her fell away like a cloak. She was just a simple,
enthusiastic, delighted girl, after all!

"Like them?" asked the young man, laconically.

"I _love_ them!" Frances declared.

Pratt was thinking how wonderful it was that a girl could seize a big
bunch of posies like that, and hug them, and press them to her face, and
still not crush the fragile things.

"Why," he thought, "I've had to handle them like eggs all the way here,
to keep from spoiling them beyond repair. Aren't girls wonders?"

You see, Pratt Sanderson was beginning to be interested in the mysteri