emen and scholars had played some part--the vagabond scion of a good
family, perhaps. A multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock of
the West, under names that carried no significance in the places whence
they came.

Weakness and self-indulgence there were, and those writ large and deep, on
the face of Warren Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper
significance, the wavering lines of instability produced a curiously
ambiguous effect of a fine head modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's
copy of the Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the first lessons, might
approximate it.

A smoking kerosene lamp revealed a supper-table of almost institutional
proportions. There were four sons and two daughters of the Tumlin union,
strapping lads and lasses all of them, with more than a common dower of
lusty health and a beauty that was something deeper than the perishable
iridescence of youth. There was Fremont, named for the explorer-soldier;
there was Orlando, named from his mother's vague, idle musings over
paper-backed literature at certain "unchancy" seasons; there was Richards,
named from pure policy, for a local great man of whom Warren Rodney had
anticipated a helping hand at the time; there was Eudora, whose nominal
origin was uncertain, unless it bore affiliation to that of Orlando; there
was Sadie, thus termed to avoid the painful distinctions of "old Sally"
and "young Sally"; and, lastly, like a postscript, came Dan--with him,
fancy, in the matter of names, seemed to have failed. Dan was now six, a
plump little caricature of a man in blue overalls, which, as they had
descended to him from Richards in the nature of an heirloom, reached high
under his armpits and shortened the function of his suspenders to the
vanishing point.

Eudora was now sixteen, and the woman-famine in all the land had gifted
her with a surprising precocity. Eudora knew her value and meant to make
the most of it. Unlike her mother in the old Black Hill days, she expected
more than a "home of her own." To-night four suitors sat at table with
Eudora, and she might have had forty had she desired it. Any one of the
four would have cheerfully murdered the remaining three had opportunity
presented itself. Supper was a mockery to them, a Barmecide feast. Each
watched his rivals--and Eudora. This was a matter of life and death. There
was no time for food. The girl revelled in the situation to the full of
her untaught, unthinking, primit