isappointment she scarcely heard Dick's concluding remark
about the hurry of the colonel. My sharp ears, however, took this in and
it was thought-provoking. Sampson was known to ride off at all hours,
yet this incident seemed unusual.

At eight o'clock the house and porch and patio were ablaze with lights.
Every lantern and lamp on the place, together with all that could be
bought and borrowed, had been brought into requisition.

The cowboys arrived first, all dressed in their best, clean shaven, red
faced, bright eyed, eager for the fun to commence. Then the young people
from town, and a good sprinkling of older people, came in a steady
stream.

Miss Sampson received them graciously, excused her father's absence, and
bade them be at home.

The music, or the discordance that went by that name, was furnished by
two cowboys with banjos and an antediluvian gentleman with a fiddle.
Nevertheless, it was music that could be danced to, and there was no
lack of enthusiasm.

I went from porch to parlor and thence to patio, watching and amused.
The lights and the decorations of flowers, the bright dresses and the
flashy scarfs of the cowboys furnished a gay enough scene to a man of
lonesome and stern life like mine. During the dance there was a steady,
continuous shuffling tramp of boots, and during the interval following a
steady, low hum of merry talk and laughter.

My wandering from place to place, apart from my usual careful
observation, was an unobtrusive but, to me, a sneaking pursuit of Sally
Langdon.

She had on a white dress I had never seen with a low neck and short
sleeves, and she looked so sweet, so dainty, so altogether desirable,
that I groaned a hundred times in my jealousy. Because, manifestly,
Sally did not intend to run any risk of my not seeing her in her glory,
no matter where my eyes looked.

A couple of times in promenading I passed her on the arm of some proud
cowboy or gallant young buck from town, and on these occasions she
favored her escort with a languishing glance that probably did as much
damage to him as to me.

Presently she caught me red-handed in my careless, sauntering pursuit of
her, and then, whether by intent or from indifference, she apparently
deigned me no more notice. But, quick to feel a difference in her, I
marked that from that moment her gaiety gradually merged into
coquettishness, and soon into flirtation.

Then, just to see how far she would go, perhaps desperately hop