etted. Max was only a boy then, and they were great
companions."

"Yes; and if he had been sensible, he would have fallen in love with her
and made her Mrs. Lyster, instead of knocking around Western mining
towns, and making queer friends," said the girl, smiling at the old lady's
astonished face. "She is just the sort of girl to suit him."

"My dear," she said, solemnly, "do you really care for him a particle?"

"Who--Max? Of course I do. He is the best fellow I know, and was so good
to me out there in the wilderness. There was no one out there to compare
me with, so I suppose I loomed up big when compared with the average
squaw. But everything is different here. I did not know how different. I
know now, however, and I won't let him go on making a mistake."

"Oh, Montana!" cried the little lady, pleadingly.

Just then a maid entered with two cards, at which she glanced with a
dismay that was comical.

"Margaret and Max! Why, is it not strange they should call at the same
time, and at a time when--"

"When I was pairing them off so nicely, without their knowledge," added
the girl. "Have them come up here, won't you? It is so much more cozy than
that very elegant parlor. And I always feel as if poor Max had been turned
out of his home since I came."

So they came to the little sitting room--pretty, dark-eyed Margaret, with
her faultless manners and her real fondness for Miss Seldon, whom she
kissed three times.

"For I have not seen you for three days," she explained, "and those two
are back numbers." Then she turned to 'Tana and eyed her admiringly as
they clasped hands.

"You look as though you had stepped from a picture of classic Greek," she
declared. "Where in that pretty curly head of yours do you find the ideas
for those artistic arrangements of form and color? You are an artist,
Montana, and you don't know it."

"I will begin to believe it if people keep telling me so."

"Who else has told you?" asked Lyster, and she laughed at him.

"Not you," she replied; "at least not since you teased me about the clay
Indians I made on the shores of the Kootenai. But some one else has told
me--Mr. Roden."

"Roden, the sculptor! But how does he know?"

She glanced from one face to the other, and sighed with a serio-comic
expression. "I might as well confess," she said, at last. "I am so glad
you are here, Miss Margaret, for I may need an advocate. I have been
working two hours a day in Mr. Roden's studio for