s of a busy
life, to a time when, for a brief space, she had watched over the
welfare of another than her uncle, when the dark native blood which
flowed plentifully in her veins had asserted itself, and a nature which
was hers had refused to remain buried beneath a superficial European
training. She was thinking of a man who had formed a secret part of her
life for a few short years, when she had allowed her heart to dictate a
course for her actions which no other motive but that of love could have
brought about. She was thinking of Peter Retief, a pretty scoundrel, a
renowned "bad man," a man of wild and reckless daring. He had been the
terror of the countryside. A cattle-thief who feared neither man nor
devil; a man who for twelve months and more had carried, his life in his
hands, the sworn enemy of law and order, but who, in his worst moments,
had never been known to injure a poor man or a woman. The wild blood of
the half-breed that was in her had been stirred, as only a woman's blood
can be, by his reckless dealings, his courage, effrontery, and withal
his wondrous kindliness of disposition. She was thinking of this man
now, this man whom she knew to be numbered amongst the countless victims
of that dreadful mire. And what had conjured this thought? A horse--a
horse peacefully grazing far out across the mire in the direction of the
distant hills which she knew had once been this desperado's home.

Her train of recollection suddenly became broken, and a sigh escaped her
as the sound of her uncle's voice fell upon her ears. She did not move,
however, for she knew that Lablache was with him, and this man she hated
with the fiery hatred only to be found in the half-breeds of any native
race.

"I'm sorry, John, we can't agree on the point," Lablache was saying in
his wheezy voice, as the two men stood at the other end of the veranda,
"but I'm quite determined Upon the matter myself. The land intersects
mine and cuts me clean off from the railway siding, and I am forced to
take my cattle a circle of nearly fifteen miles to ship them. If he
would only be reasonable and allow a passage I would say nothing. I will
force him to sell."

"If you can," put in the rancher. "I reckon you've got chilled steel to
deal with when you endeavor to 'force' old Joe Norton to sell the finest
wheat land in the country."

At this point in the conversation three men came round from the back of
the house. They were "cow" hands belonging