ound, somewhat to her surprise, that Seth
liked music. The piano was one of the wonders of the Huntington house,
for pianos are not essential instruments in the equipment of cattle
ranches, and this was the only one in all that region of cattledom.

In music Seth's tastes were sentimental. "Lost Chords" and "Rosaries"
subdued him almost to tears; and if Marion only brought him tuneful
violets every morn he tried his best to be good. So when Claire was
not on duty at the bedside Marion must needs be on duty at the
piano,--an ordeal that Claire endured, of course, more patiently than
Marion.

Claire was almost comically unfit to be a ranchman's wife, and she too
had been a trial on occasions. She was small and delicate, but
vivacious, amiable, bright. Her blue eyes always had a childlike
wonder in them, and she was fond of wearing her fluffy, golden hair in
a girlish knot low on her neck, or even in a long, thick braid down
her back, with a blue ribbon bow at the end. She flitted about the
house like a butterfly, and yet she had managed somehow to make her
home the marvel of Paradise Park.

To begin with it was the ordinary, one-story, rambling house of pine,
with spruce-clad hills rising behind it, and a little stream,
rollicking down between it and the corrals. But a wide veranda had
been constructed on three sides of it, furnished with wicker chairs,
and half-screened with boxes of growing flowers. All around the house
flowers grew,--old-fashioned garden flowers, roses and geraniums; beds
of them everywhere, and blossoming shrubs along the stream.

The house contained, besides the kitchen and the bedrooms, just one
big room. This, with its low ceiling, unpainted timbers, and small
windows, was not unlike the hall of some old manor house. The floor
was covered with Navajo rugs in rich and barbaric colors; the walls
were draped with burlap in dull red dyes; and the windows were
curtained with chintz in bright yellows and reds. Above the windows
and doors hung many heads of deer and elk and mountain sheep, and
rifles on racks of horn. Between the two front windows stood the
upright piano, and near it a small bookcase filled with novels and
volumes of poetry. The big oak table at mealtime was made to look very
inviting with white napery and modest china and silver, and a bouquet
always in its center. At other times it was a library table, heaped
with books and magazines, and in the evening, when the kerosene lamps
wer