on filled with
heads of antelope, while the hide of a buffalo constituted the
covering for his floor.

Surrounded by an atmosphere of sobriety, for even at that early date
the fad of temperance had fastened itself upon Kansas, he became by
and by of necessity a hard working farmer, tilling the soil from
morning till night in the struggle to earn his salt.

There are not many women on the prairies now. Then they were even more
scarce. It was not long before his admiring eyes centered themselves
upon Cyclona. He fell to wondering why it was that she appeared to
consider her own home so excellent a place to stay away from.

Personally he would consider the topsy turvy house a good and
sufficient reason for continued absence, but according to his English
ideas a girl should love her own roof whether it was right side up or
inverted.

The thought of this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze
remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds
in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the
monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert
wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of
night skies scattered thick with dusty stars.

His interest grew to the extent that he issued from his dugout early
of mornings in order to see her depart for her mysterious destination.

He waited at unseemly hours in the vicinity of Jonathan's curious
dwelling to behold her as she came back home.

On one of these occasions, when he was turning to go, after watching
her throw the saddle on her broncho, fasten the straps, leap into the
saddle and speed away, to be swallowed up by the distances, Jonathan
came out of the topsy turvy house and found him.

"Walk with me awhile," implored Walsingham, a sudden sense of the
loneliness of the prairie having come upon him with the vanishing of
the girl.

Jonathan, always ready to idle, filled his pipe and walked with him.

"Who is the girl?" asked Hugh.

"She is a little girl we adopted," explained Jonathan. "I don't know
who she is or where she came from. Her mother blew away in a cyclone.
That is all I know about her."

"A pretty girl," commented Hugh.

"And a mighty good girl," added Jonathan. "I don't know what we'd do
without her."

"You seem to do without her a good deal," said Hugh, relighting his
pipe which the wind had blown out. "She is away from home most of the
time."

"Cyclona's playin