alaces of vice and my solicitous
friends; I want to lead the simple, virtuous life of a sheep-herder
until my system recovers from a certain shock," explained the applicant
glibly, "and something within me tells me that you are not the man to
refuse a job to a youth filled with such a worthy ambition."

Dubois grinned understandingly and gave him work at half a
sheep-herder's usual pay.

Whatever the nature of Dr. Harpe's business with his employer, the
interview appeared to have been eminently satisfactory to them both, for
she was smiling broadly, while Dubois seemed not only excited but elated
when they returned together.

He looked after her buggy as she drove away, and chuckled--

"Ha--she brings me good news--zat woman!"

While the Dago Duke was warming up the fried potatoes and bacon, which
remained from breakfast, over the rusty camp-stove, Dubois was diving
under his bunk for a box from which he produced a yellowed shirt and
collar, together with a suit of black clothes, nearly new.

"Per Iddio! 'Tis the Day of Judgment and you've gotten inside
information!" jeered the Dago Duke.

Dubois showed his yellowed teeth.

"Mais oui, 'eet is ze Resurrection."

"I swear, you look like Napoleon, Dubois!" gibed the Dago Duke, when he
was fully arrayed.

"Why not?" The Frenchman's face wore a complacent smirk. "Ze Little
Corporal, _he_ married a queen."

The frying-pan of fried potatoes all but dropped from the Dago Duke's
hand, while his employer enjoyed to the utmost the amazement upon his
face.

"The lady doc?"

Dubois threw up both hands in vehement protest.

"Non, non! Mon Dieu, non, non!"

The Dago Duke shrugged his shoulders impertinently.

"You aim higher, perhaps?"

"Mais certes," he leered. "Old Dubois has thirty thousand sheep."

"To exchange for----"

"A queen, ze belle of Crowheart--Mees Essie Teesdale!"

The Dago Duke stared and continued to regard his employer fixedly. Essie
Tisdale! Had the solitude affected the old man's mind at last? Was he
crazy? How else account for the preposterous suggestion, his colossal
egotism? Why, Essie Tisdale, even to the Dago Duke's critical eye, was
like a delicately tinted prairie rose, while old Dubois with his
iron-gray hair bristling on his bullet-shaped head, his thick,
furrow-encircled neck, his swarthy, obstinate, brutal face, was
seventy, a remarkable seventy, it is true, but seventy, and far from
prepossessing. It was too absurd! It must be