e three advance
figures--the girl, Woodhull, her brother Jed--broke away and raced over
the remaining few hundred yards, coming up abreast, laughing in the glee
of youth exhilarated by the feel of good horseflesh under knee and the
breath of a vital morning air.

As they flung off Will Banion scarce gave a look to his own excited
steed. He was first with a hand to Molly Wingate as she sprang lightly
down, anticipating her other cavalier, Woodhull, who frowned, none too
well pleased, as he dismounted.

Molly Wingate ran up and caught her mother in her strong young arms,
kissing her roundly, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed in the
excitement of the hour, the additional excitement of the presence of
these young men. She must kiss someone.

Yes, the rumors were true, and more than true. The young school-teacher
could well carry her title as the belle of old Liberty town here on the
far frontier. A lovely lass of eighteen years or so, she was, blue of
eye and of abundant red-brown hair of that tint which ever has turned
the eyes and heads of men. Her mouth, smiling to show white, even teeth,
was wide enough for comfort in a kiss, and turned up strongly at the
corners, so that her face seemed always sunny and carefree, were it not
for the recurrent grave, almost somber look of the wide-set eyes in
moments of repose.

Above the middle height of woman's stature, she had none of the lank
irregularity of the typical frontier woman of the early ague lands; but
was round and well developed. Above the open collar of her brown riding
costume stood the flawless column of a fair and tall white throat. New
ripened into womanhood, wholly fit for love, gay of youth and its racing
veins, what wonder Molly Wingate could have chosen not from two but
twenty suitors of the best in all that countryside? Her conquests had
been many since the time when, as a young girl, and fulfilling her
parents' desire to educate their daughter, she had come all the way from
the Sangamon country of Illinois to the best school then existent so far
west--Clay Seminary, of quaint old Liberty.

The touch of dignity gained of the ancient traditions of the South,
never lost in two generations west of the Appalachians, remained about
the young girl now, so that she rather might have classed above her
parents. They, moving from Kentucky into Indiana, from Indiana into
Illinois, and now on to Oregon, never in all their toiling days had
forgotten their reverenc