country for? There are more suitable places in Wyoming for you
than this lonesome spot. What's the object, anyhow?"

"I am building here the City of Refuge," said she, "and its solitude
will be its walls."

"Ready for the time when _he_ comes back, I suppose?"

She nodded assent slowly, as if grudging him that share of the knowledge
of her inner life.

"Poor old kid, you've got a job ahead of you!" he commiserated.

A resentful flush crept into her face, but she turned aside, gathering
her sticks as if to hide her displeasure. Boyle laughed.

"Pardon the familiarity--'vulgar familiarity' you used to call
it--Agnes. But 'what's bred in the bone,' you know."

"It doesn't matter so much when there's no one else around, but it's
awkward before people."

"You wouldn't marry me on account of my tongue!" said he with sour
reminiscence.

"It wasn't so much that, Jerry," she chided, "and you know it perfectly
well."

"Oh, well, if a man does take a drink now and then----" he discounted.

"But many drinks, and frequently, are quite different," she reproved.

"We'll not fuss about it."

"Far from it," she agreed.

"I didn't come down to open old matters, although I suppose you thought
that was my intention when you dodged me and stuck so close to that
tin-horn doctor up at Meander."

"It's comforting to know you haven't come for--_that_," said she,
ignoring his coarse reference to Slavens.

"No; things change a good deal in four years' time, even sentiment--and
names."

"But it wouldn't be asking too much to expect you to respect some of the
changes?"

"I don't suppose," he mused, "that many people around here care whether
a man's name is the one he goes by, or whether it's the one he gets his
mail under at the post-office at Comanche. That's generally believed to
be a man's own business. Of course, he might carry it too far, but
that's his own lookout."

"Are you on your way to Comanche?" she asked.

Boyle motioned her to the trunk of the cottonwood whose branches she had
been chopping into fuel, with graceful and unspoken invitation to sit
down and hear the tale of his projected adventures.

"I've been wearing a pair of these high-heeled boots the past few days
for the first time since I rode the range," he explained, "and they make
my ankles tired when I stand around."

He seated himself beside her on the fallen log.

"No, I'm not going to Comanche," said he. "I came down here to see you.
They ga