e kind of drugged whisky up there at the cabin that made his head
feel queer. Say, he thinks that guy from the fort came in and looked at
him once while he was asleep. He says it was only a dream, but I bet he
did. Say, Ma, ain't you gonta give me another doughnut?"

In the quiet of her chamber at last, Margaret knelt before her window
toward the purple, shadowy mountain under the starry dome, and gave
thanks for the deliverance of Gardley; while Bud, in his comfortable
loft, lay down to his well-earned rest and dreamed of pirates and angels
and a hero who looked like the Kid.

CHAPTER XXVI

The Sunday before Lance Gardley started East on his journey of
reparation two strangers slipped quietly into the back of the
school-house during the singing of the first hymn and sat down in the
shadow by the door.

Margaret was playing the piano when they came in, and did not see them,
and when she turned back to her Scripture lesson she had time for but
the briefest of glances. She supposed they must be some visitors from
the fort, as they were speaking to the captain's wife----who came over
occasionally to the Sunday service, perhaps because it afforded an
opportunity for a ride with one of the young officers. These occasional
visitors who came for amusement and curiosity had ceased to trouble
Margaret. Her real work was with the men and women and children who
loved the services for their own sake, and she tried as much as possible
to forget outsiders. So, that day everything went on just as usual,
Margaret putting her heart into the prayer, the simple, storylike
reading of the Scripture, and the other story-sermon which followed it.
Gardley sang unusually well at the close, a wonderful bit from an
oratorio that he and Margaret had been practising.

But when toward the close of the little vesper service Margaret gave
opportunity, as she often did, for others to take part in sentence
prayers, one of the strangers from the back of the room stood up and
began to pray. And such a prayer! Heaven seemed to bend low, and earth
to kneel and beseech as the stranger-man, with a face like an archangel,
and a body of an athlete clothed in a brown-flannel shirt and khakis,
besought the Lord of heaven for a blessing on this gathering and on the
leader of this little company who had so wonderfully led them to see the
Christ and their need of salvation through the lesson of the day. And it
did not need Bud's low-breathed whisper, "T