lie continued looking charmingly blank.
Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The
pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed
old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on the
outskirts of the town.

"My place is down there," he said simply. "Just sold it last week; three
hundred acres at three hundred dollars an acre. They're layin' it out in
town lots."

"Good God, man!" cried Grylls. "You could buy me out and have a pile
over!" Every time he spoke, he glanced over his shoulder at Natalie.

Old Paul smiled up at him admiringly. "But this is only a sort of
accident," he said. "You made yours."

"What in he--Why are you driving the stage, then?" demanded Grylls.

"Well," said the old man slowly; "seems though I just got in the way of
it. Seems I just _had_ to keep hanging on to the ribbons, or lose holt
altogether."

"What are you going to do with all that money?" Grylls wanted to know.

"Well," said Paul with a quiet grin; "I bought me a new hat like the
swells wear; and a pair of Eastern shoes. They pinch me somepin' cruel,
too."

"Why don't you travel East, Mr. Smiley?" suggested Nell. She whom they
all addressed so cavalierly was particular to put a handle to each name.

"Travel! I had enough o' that, my girl," he said. "Forty-five years ago
I travelled East to Winnipeg and got me a wife. Brought her back over
the plains in a Red River cart. Eight hunder miles, and hostile redskins
all the way! What's travellin' nowadays!"

"Were you born out here?" asked Garth, shaping a story for the _Leader_
in his mind.

"At Howard House, west of here in the Rockies," said Paul. "My father
was Hudson's Bay trader there."

"Paul's an old-timer all right," said Grylls carelessly. He was
becoming bored with the trend the conversation was taking.

"One of the first eight who broke ground in Prince George," said the old
man proudly. "Yonder's the first two-story house in the country. I built
it. No!" he continued thoughtfully; "I'm keeping my house and ten acres;
and me and the old woman's calc'latin' to stop there and watch the march
o' progress by our door. She wouldn't give up her front step for all the
real-estate sharks in Prince George. But," he added with a chuckle, "I
shouldn't wonder if she was shocked some when them trolley-cars I hear
tell of goes kitin' by."

"I kin understand just how she feels," remarked old Nell to Natalie,