tion, and I simply
came to see who it was who could sing like that--to believe my own
ears!"

Miss Bouverie was thrilled. The stranger spoke with an authority that
she divined, a sincerity which she instinctively took on trust. Her
breath came quickly; she was a little nervous now.

"If you won't sing to my face," he went on, "I must go back to where I
hung up my horse, and pray that you will at least send me on my way
rejoicing. You will do that in any case. I didn't know there was such a
voice in these parts. You sing a good deal, of course?"

"I haven't sung for months."

He was now in the room; there was no longer any necessity to bar the
doorway, and the light coming through fell full on his amazement. The
girl stood before him with a calm face, more wistful than ironic, yet
with hints of humor in the dark blue eyes. Her companion put up the
eye-glass which he had dropped at her reply.

"May I ask what you are doing in these wilds?"

"Certainly. I am Mrs. Clarkson's companion."

"And you sing, for the first time in months, the minute her back is
turned: has the lady no soul for music?"

"You had better ask the lady."

And her visible humor reached the corners of Miss Bouverie's mouth.

"She sings herself, perhaps?"

"And I am here to play her accompaniments!"

The eye-glass focussed the great, smiling girl.

"_Can_ she sing?"

"She has a voice."

"But have you never let her hear yours?"

"Once. I had not been here long enough to know better. And I made my
usual mistake."

"What is that?"

"I thought I had the station to myself."

The questioner bowed to his rebuke. "Well?" he persisted none the less.

"I was told exactly what my voice was like, and fit for."

The gentleman turned on his heel, as though her appreciation of the
humor of her position were an annoyance to him. His movement brought him
face to face with a photographic galaxy of ladies in varying styles of
evening dress, with an equal variety in coiffures, but a certain family
likeness running through the series.

"Are any of these Mrs. Clarkson?"

"All of them."

He muttered something in his mustache. "And what's this?" he asked of a
sudden.

The young man (for as such Miss Bouverie was beginning to regard him)
was standing under the flaming bill of a grand concert to be given in
the township of Yallarook for the benefit of local charities.

"Oh, that's Mrs. Clarkson's concert," he was informed. "She has been
getting