f getting square with
him."

By this time she regretted the dollars spent from her scant hoard for
the advertisement, but the reply came and the game became a
passionately interesting one. She answered the letter again, using a
wealth of imagination.

"She'll sure answer this one, but then I'll say I've changed my mind
and have decided that I ain't going to marry. Takes me really for a
man, she does. Must be a fool, she must. And she ain't asked for
money, ain't that funny? If she writes back she'll abuse me like a
pickpocket, anyway. Won't he be mad when he gets the letter!"

Sophy's general knowledge of postal matters and of some of the more
familiar rules of law warned her that she was skating on thin ice. Yet
her last letter had ventured rather far. In her first letter she had
merely signed with the initials, but this time she had boldly used
Hugo Ennis's name. She thought she would escape all danger of having
committed a forgery by simply printing the letters.

"And besides, there ain't any one can tell I ever wrote those
letters," she reassured herself, perhaps mistakenly. "If there's ever
any enquiry I'll stick to it that some one just dropped them in the
mail-box and I forwarded them as usual. When it comes to her answers
they'll all be in Box 17, unopened, and I can say I held them till
called for, according to rules. I never referred to them in what I
wrote. Just told her to come along and promised her all sorts of
things."

Again she waited impatiently for an answer, which never came. Instead
of it there was a telegram addressed to Hugo Ennis, which was of
course received by Follansbee, the station agent, who read it with
eyes rather widely opened. He transcribed the message and entrusted it
to big Stefan, the Swede, who now carried mail to a few outlying
camps.

"It's a queer thing, Stefan," commented Joe. "Looks like there's some
woman comin' all the way from New York to see yer friend Hugo."

"Vell, dat's yoost his own pusiness, I tank," answered the Swede,
placidly.

"Sure enough, but it's queer, anyways. Did he ever speak of havin'
some gal back east?"

"If he had it vould still be his own pusiness," asserted Stefan,
biting off a chew from a black plug and stowing away the telegram in a
coat pocket. Hugo Ennis was his friend. Anything that Hugo did was all
right. Folks who had anything to criticize in his conduct were likely
to incur Stefan's displeasure.

The big fellow's dog-team was rea