ver at the same time with a fond,
unconscious thumb. "You hold it just as steady as I could," he said with
pride, and added, insinuatingly, "I could learn yu' the professional
drop in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun."

"You'd not trade, though," said she, "for all your flattery."

"Will yu' trade?" pounced Lin. "Won't yu'?"

"Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like
me ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?"

"She knows the brands, too!" cried Lin, in ecstasy. "See here," he
remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, "we're losing time
right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
lady, and I'll bring her along."

I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the
office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held
the ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing,
and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to
the sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a
cooking-stove in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs,
and here the company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so
I helped him put his room to rights. But we need not have hurried
ourselves. Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I went
out and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards away
skulked poor Texas, alone. This boy's name was, like himself, of the
somewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.

As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and
on seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, "Did he know?"

Lin hesitated.

"You did know!" she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, "I reckon you don't
like to have to tell folks bad news."

It was I that now hesitated.

"Not to a strange girl, anyway!" said she. "Well, now I have good news
to tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you
knew about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those things
can't be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about
this world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left
home five years ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate's
grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize
bad companions when they came around. See that!" She showed me a paper,
taking it out like a precious thing, a